


Killer Karma

by bodysnatch3r



Series: The Heistverse [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-08 10:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6850441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when you put a fistfight-happy Scotsman (Dwalin MacFundin), a knife-obsessed sniper (Nori Rison) and an MI6 agent gone rogue (Bofur Broadbeam) together?<br/>Well, definitely nothing good, if you were to ask Elrond Peredhel, the recently-appointed head of Scotland Yard. Almost two years after a mysterious organisation known as The Eye struck a series of deadly attacks in the heart of London, what is known in most circles as the Golden Trio, this delightful collaboration of three of Europe’s worst (and therefore best) contract killers, snipers and torturers-for-hire decides it’s the perfect time to get themselves caught up in something much, much bigger than they are: Nori Rison’s always found it hard to let go of his grudges, and when the offending party happens to be Lucky, aka The Mouth, aka one of The Eye’s most loyal and deadly agents, things might get a little… complicated.<br/>And God forbid Shelob Örümcek ever catch wind of what's happening.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <span class="small"><b>Trigger Warnings: </b>graphic violence, drug mention, torture, hatesex, general dark humor. Individual warnings will be given chapter by chapter.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> written for this year's hobbit big bang challenge. you can find bracari-iris’ amazing art [here](http://bracari-iris.tumblr.com/post/145117696915/my-illustrations-for-killer-karma-an-amazing) and their sketches [here](http://bracari-iris.tumblr.com/post/145119412065/sketches-for-killer-karma-by-bodysnatch3r-for).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for violence.

you've got such a lovely bed  
what a very nice trail of dead  
did you think it wouldn't happen  
if you acted like you didn't know?

 _denial thing_ , amanda palmer

 

**TALLINN, ESTONIA  
** HOTEL TELEGRAAF  
APRIL 12 th, 1998  
07:57 pm 

Nori Rison has been having, if one could call it, an _all right_ day. He's been sitting around waiting, and waiting's always the worst part of his job, but the weather's not too bad and he's able, for once, to not have to work in the pouring rain. He takes a bite from his apple and shifts from a crouch to bending one knee and keeping the other on the ground, cracks his neck, sighs when his joints pop. The air's still carrying the winter frost, like fingers that run their tips along his jaw, and he sniffles, and waits, and shivers. He pinches the bridge of his nose, gloved hands creaking slightly.

Dwalin MacFundin has been having, if one could call it, a discreetly _uneventful_ day. He's been sitting around waiting, and waiting's always the part of his job he can't stand, and even though he's blissfully found cover inside, somewhere at least marginally sheltered, the wind still whistles through the window of the empty apartment, and he pulls his cap down to also cover his ears. He peers out the window slightly open and ajar, making sure to hide the rifle before he needs it-- it would be _unprofessional_ to get caught, and he doesn't feel like spending a week in an Estonian prison. Still, he leans back, and cleans his weapon, and makes sure the ash from his cigarette doesn't fall onto the floor.

8:00 PM, and his watch bleeps once.

8:00 PM, the pager on Nori's hip chimes.

“I know, love.” MacFundin murmurs, readies the Remington, runs a finger along it, the handle clacking as he fixes the bolt, and he waits.

“Oh I hear you, lover.” Rison smirks, bringing his eye to the viewfinder, and swallows.

A black BMW turns the corner and pulls up in front of the Hotel Telegraaf, shines in the streetlights.

“Now, you're making this _too_ easy,” Nori snarls, almost laughing (but he doesn't, because laughing would make him miss his mark), and the man steps out of the car. His security team is close behind, nervously glancing around. Nori's confident enough to know he won't be seen, and to know he won't miss. The man's temple aligns with the centre of the viewfinder, and then he _does_ chuckle--

Dwalin clears his throat, clenches his cigarette between his teeth, and recognizes the man from the photos Chekov gave him. A clear shot to the back of the head, easy as falling asleep. He wipes his hands on his shirt and then narrows his eyes.

He steadies his hands as he steadies his breathing, one calm slow intake, one longer as he empties his lungs.

Nori inhales, once, drawn out, and holds it in his chest and bears down. He's about to squeeze the trigger when he sees the man's face unceremoniously disintegrate and splatter onto the nearest bodyguard's face. Someone screams. The man falls to the ground, the back of his head open like an angry cracked egg.

“ _What_ the _fuck_?”

Rison's head shoots up, and he frantically searches the nearby buildings for any trace of movement, of personhood, of whoever's _done_ this to him. Dwalin's quickly picking up his things, and he glances over his shoulder for a moment to check the building across from him.

Rison sees him in the window.

He sees Rison.

He's not entirely sure they've made eye contact, but then the man across the road, on the roof, is _scrambling_ to pack his rifle up, and Dwalin's suddenly very aware he's stepped on someone's toes.

“Shit.”

“Oh _no you don't_ \--” Nori snarls to nobody save for the pigeon he kicks out of the way as he sees that Dwalin starts leaving, Rison throws the door that least to the roof open and runs down the stairs three steps at a time, nearly trips, and then slams himself against the building's wall out of view, chest heaving, when the first police car drives by. He takes advantage of the confusion and slips quickly past, and then he's in the building across the street, asking to be let through a gaggle of terrified by-standers.

What a _fucking mess_. He runs through an archway and catches a glimpse of a man running, carrying something over his shoulder.

“ _Oi_! OI!”

He curses under his breath when Dwalin starts running _faster—_ and manages to pull a knife out from inside his coat. He weighs it, skits almost to a halt to take aim, and throws.

Dwalin ducks, and Nori misses.

“Oh, for _Christ's fucking sake_ \-- Listen, I just want _to talk_!”

Dwalin thinks he's heard wrong-- he _must have_ , certainly, this isn't what... _normal_ people scream at you after throwing a knife at you, and Nori grabs the blade off the floor just as Dwalin turns into a doorway and runs blindly up a flight of stairs. Nori catches a glimpse of Dwalin a flight or so ahead of him, and throws himself after him.

“Just a fucking _chat_ , it's all I wanna have.”

“ _Fuck off_!”

Dwalin loses precious lung capacity to answer him, but the growl that comes from below is enough of a satisfaction to make him smirk, up until he realizes he's reached the top, and there's nowhere to go if not the attic.

“Shit,” he breathes, leaning on his knees to catch his breath, the weight of the rifle case finally making itself suddenly known.

Nori leaves the rifle case a landing below.

“ _Here you are_.”

Someone jumps onto Dwalin's back, hands clutching a garrote, the wire slipping around Dwalin's neck. MacFundin chokes and lurches forward, snarls a panicked “Jesus _Christ_!” and then manages to throw the man off of himself, takes off his rifle case as quick as he can. Nori lands with a thud against the wall, inches from the stairs. He wheezes, and stands, falters a moment as he shakes his head to clear it, and then slams himself into Dwalin. Dwalin feels every one of his muscles tense, feels his hands try and grip the other, feels his back collide with the floor nonetheless.

“ _Who fucking sent you_?”

Dwalin lands a punch to Nori's face in reply. The man's head whips back, a messy ponytail is all that's left of his braid, giving Dwalin long enough to kick him in the stomach and move back, long enough for him to scramble into standing. If he manages to get him close, he can find a way to shove Rison down the stairs.

“None of your _fucking business_.”

“Wrong, you Scottish bastard, it _is_ my business.”

Dwalin grabs Nori by the neck and slams him against the banister, chest first, so his head is leaning over the emptiness below. Nori plants both hands on either side of his body and throws his head back, landing with an audible crack somewhere on Dwalin's face: not the nose, but the cheek, and Dwalin lets go of him.

Now they're both bleeding, and Nori licks the red that's pouring from his teeth. He catches his breath, and he _grins_.

“You see, there's fucking _rules_. Number one,” he unsheathes a knife and lurches for Dwalin's face, but Dwalin moves back quick enough, and Nori tries again, Dwalin grabs his arm to stop the blow, “you don't,” Nori lets go of the knife and catches it with his free hand, “fucking,” he swoops from the bottom towards Dwalin's belly, “step,” Dwalin lets go of his arm and jumps back, aims with a fist for Nori's head, “on my fucking,” Nori ducks the blow and swipes at Dwalin's ankles with the knife, having to move knocks Dwalin over, “ _toes_ , you” Dwalin's crouched, and Nori's knee finally connects with his nose, “stupid,” Dwalin falls back, spitting blood, and in his dumbfounded moment of stupor then sees they've come to have the stairs behind them. If he lets Nori close enough, he'll manage to push him. Nori straddles him, “ _stupid_ , stupid Scotsman.”

Dwalin grins at Nori, the pain in his face making him almost dizzy.

“And what's rule number two, Cockney shit?”

Nori leans down, and his lips are a breath from Dwalin's ear.

“I get to _kill_ whoever does.”

And Dwalin's planting two hands on Nori's chest, and Nori's realizing he's fucked up more than he thought, and Dwalin's still grinning when he pushes him, and as he pushes him he wobbles to a standing position, and as he does so his momentum manages to shove Nori the few steps necessary to find the stairs, Nori scrambling with his hands buried in Dwalin's leather jacket.

But as Nori falls, he tightens his grip on Dwalin.

“ _Oh shi_ \--”

They both fly down, hit the floor of the landing where Nori's left his rifle. Nori lets go of him, and Dwalin makes an intimate encounter with the tiled floor, tastes the blood leaking from his lip into his mouth. Nori breathes through his aching back, the pain in his right finger proof enough that it's broken, as Dwalin leans on his elbows, attempts to stand and fails, and tries to not feel like he's been kicked in the head. He _has_ , but this feels as if he's been kicked in the head ten times in a row.

He gains a semblance of coherence right when Nori's arms circle around his neck and his knee connects with the small of his back.

“ _Break or choke_ , Scotch?”

The voice leers with a man gritting his teeth through pain. Nonetheless, he's still stronger than Dwalin'd expect, given the tumble they've just had. At first all his mind tells him is to grab at both of Nori's arms and try to pry him off of him. He tastes rust where his cheek's split and leaking into his mouth. He tastes bone where the fall's chipped one of his teeth-. Nori tightens his grip and it cuts off the oxygen abruptly, it takes Dwalin a second to gain his footing, and, in the scramble of Nori slowly choking him, he finds the tattered remains of Nori's braid.

Nori realizes too late what's going on, and when Dwalin pulls his hair he screams.

“No, _no_ \--”

Only that Dwalin pulls even harder, and manages to have him let go of his neck. He stands, and sees Nori's rifle case, and as he sees Nori scrambling to pull out the knife sheathed in his boot, he makes sure for Rison to make a quick and personal acquaintance with the butt of it.

He's out cold the moment it connects with his temple. Dwalin lets go of it, falls back, the small of his back hitting the wall, his hands on his knees.

He heaves, trying to breathe as phlegm and blood mix in the back of his mouth, and when he coughs and spits into a handkerchief, he finds his tooth.

“Well fuck me,” he mumbles, glancing first at the tooth and then at Nori unconscious on the floor. He shoves him aside with his foot, climbs back up the stairs, grabs his rifle and then casually walks out.

 

* * *

 

 **LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM  
** NEW SCOTLAND YARD  
APRIL 13  **th** **, 1998  
04:27 AM**

He doesn't even want to be here. Not now, at least, not four hours past midnight, not when he should be at home with his kids and his wife, not after the last few weeks he's had. By all intents and purposes, he should be home, and he should be sleeping, and he shouldn't be thinking about the current state of the world.

As things stand, as per usual, he doesn't have that luxury. He hasn't had that luxury for a few months, now, ever since he was chosen as new head of Scotland Yard, and fuck him if he knows why.

A soft knock on his door. He looks up from the monitor that's buzzing green in his face and is met with Lindir's equally haggard face.

“If it has _anything_ to do with The Eye or NeCRO, I don't want to hear about it until tomorrow.” A pause, as he sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose before looking back at Lindir, “...What is it, Lindir?”

“We've just gotten a call, sir.”

Elrond Peredhel tries very hard not to groan out loud.

“And?”

“Estonian embassy.”

“Why would the Estonian embassy be calling _us_? If it's international, it's not our business. Pass it on to MI--”

“They were asking for documentation, sir.”

“On who?”

“Nori Rison aaand--” Lindir quickly reads the names off a scrap of paper, “Dwalin MacFundin.”

Elrond puts his pencil down.

“ _Who_?”

“Dwalin MacFundin and Nori Rison. British citizens.”

“Jesus. Did you just say MacFundin?”

“Y-- yes? Do you know him?”

( _If G says that Oakenshield and his buddy have to be let go because Oakenshield's daddy said so, we let them go._ )

Elrond clenches his jaw.

“One could say that.”

Slightly, and he swallows. “Well then. In what sorts of trouble have our two friends gotten into? Were they arrested?”

“No. Well I mean, not _exactly_. Their blood's all over a Tallinn stairway.”

“Oh, _lovely_. Who killed who?”

“Neither. If there're bodies, we didn't find 'em.”

Elrond narrows his eyes at the man in front of him, and then seems about to speak. He closes his mouth, though, and thinks for a second instead.

“Hold on. What were their names?”

“Nori Rison. Dwalin MacFundin.”

“Nori Rison...” Elrond repeats the name across his lips under his breath, and then quickly opens a tab on his iMac. HOLMES 2 boots up, and it takes a good five minutes. In the meantime, Elrond resolves to staring into space and waiting for the world to continue its manic spin around him. Once the program is up and running, he glances towards Lindir, who's still standing in the doorway, and then begins skimming through a list of names.

“Rison, Nori. Rison Nori, Renley, Rhapsody, Ri... Ri... Got him.”

It takes another three minutes for the file to load, and once it does and he's skimmed it, Elrond lets out a whistle.

“Guy's serious.”

“How so?”

“He's been working steady for the last... four years. _Never caught_. Shit. That's a lot of people murdered.”

“And MacFundin?”

“Ah--” Elrond dives through the folders once more until he finds Dwalin's, and Dwalin's file, at least anything involving June 1987, is gone-- not that it matters. Not really. Not that is surprises him. He glances up at Lindir thinking he might've noticed his furrowed brow, but he hasn't, or if he has he isn't showing it, and besides it's late for everyone, and deciphering facial expressions is a hassle he doesn't want to burden himself with at this hour. Elrond gestures emptily, “A... few... minor run-ins when he was young. I guess this is his first major incident. What do the Estonians want again?”

“Criminal records, I guess. Or just to know if we know who they are.”

“Tell them we do. And then head home, Lindir. It's almost five AM.”

Lindir nods, as Elrond first searches for, then dials the telephone number of the British embassy in Tallinn.

He doesn't know why, but it feels like it's going to be a long, long night.

* * *

 


	2. ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for violence.

“You're an idiot. Don't talk.”

“I know, Beorn, listen--”

“ _Dwalin_.”

“Right. Sorry. Listen, I need help.”

A pause. Dwalin has to close his eyes and swallow as the stitches in his cheek burn like the entirety of Hell taking a vacation on the inside of his mouth. Beorn tuts as she tugs through his flesh with the needle once more, and he hisses and squeezes his eyes shut tighter.

“Hold still. _Don't talk_. Who did this to you, anyway? No. Wait. Don't answer, _yet_.”

She finally ties the stitches, Dwalin flinches and has to bite his tongue not to cry out.

The slight clink of her hands as she dips them into a basin to wash them.

“Sorry 'bout this,” Beorn mumbles, and Dwalin exhales loudly when the wound burns as she spreads antibacterial ointment on it and then bandages it.

“There. All done.”

Dwalin reaches over, grabs the basin she's just used to wash her hands, and spits blood and phlegm into it.

“Shit. Fuck. Fuck this.”

“Oh, come _on_. You've had worse done to you.”

“It still hurts like _Hell_.” he snarls, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Before she can stop him, he curses loudly, and red blossoms on the gauze she's just taped to his face.

Beorn frowns at him.

“I _told you-_ ”

“Oh, _Jesus shit_.”

“C'mon, MacFundin. Let me see.”

She leans over, grabs his face (he stares at her as annoyed as he can look with his cheek pounding a steady path of agony through his face) and peels the bandage off delicately. Luckily, no stitches have popped: the blood that blossomed simply came from him opening some fresh scabs with his hand. She quickly rinses it again, he grumbles some more, and she bandages it anew. Dwalin tries to open his mouth, and flinches.

Beorn arches an eyebrow.

“I'm not dressing it for a third time.”

“Yeah, I _fucking know_.” he mutters, taking care _not_ to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, and finds it harder than he expected. Old habits die hard, especially when there's a one point five centimeter-long cut in your cheek. So he resolves himself to frown at her, and hopefully the intensity of his knit eyebrows will convey his annoyance. Beorn simply snorts past her smile and rolls her eyes before standing up and pushing the chair she was sitting on back under the table. She walks across the small kitchen and reaches the fridge, opens it and grabs herself a beer. As she does this, Dwalin stands and stretches, popping his back. The bruises born where he was slammed against the pipes knock the air out of him, for a moment, too, and he feels Beorn's eyes scan his body top to bottom. He cannot decide if it's curious or reproachful. He brings a hand to his cheek: there's still the dents where the other's teeth found his flesh.

“Bloody arse.”

“What the hell were you doing in Brighton? And who fucked you up like this anyway?”

Dwalin comes over and pries the beer out of her hands, takes a swig and hands it back. Beorn sighs as he grins at her and replies, “Chasing ghosts. And I haven't the _slightest_ , Beorn darling.”

“You didn't see his face? Nothing?”

“Well, you see, I was busy trying not to get my face cut into little pieces. It might be someone I fucked with back in April in Tallinn, but I'm not sure. He sounded familiar, I guess. And had-- shit. Red hair? A braid? Used a knife.”

“...And tried to give you a Glasgow Smile, yeah. Yeah.” Beorn says, and then snaps, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “ _You_. Met Nori Rison.”

“Who?”

She stares at him, blank.

“... _Who_?”

“Yeah. Fucking _who_. Who is this guy?”

“Nori Rison. He--” she has to blink a few times and gape for a moment before she can continue, “He... shit, you _really_ don't know who he is?”

“No.”

“Fuck.”

“Beorn.”

“Sorry. I'm just-- shit. You're _sure_ you don't know who he is?”

“All right, Jesus Christ. We got that, I'm a bloody idiot, _now who the Hell is he_?”

“Calm _down_ ,” she snaps, “Ah. _Fuck_. He's one of the nastiest ones out there, all right? Keeps a grudge for a _real_ long while.”

Dwalin makes a face, “What does _that_ mean?”

“It means you're fucked.”

He scoffs. She scoffs back at him, louder.

“You're not _immortal_ , you know. Stop laughing. I'm being serious. Dwalin. Dwalin. Give me my fucking beer back, you already had a sip, there's more in the fridge,” she grabs it out of his hand once more and he holds both hands up and then opens her fridge to get his own.

“You're good at your job, but you're not un...killable.”

“I'll be _fine_ , Beorn.”

“He usually finds a way to kill the people he wants to kill. Once, it can be a coincidence. Twice, it's not.”

Still, he sheepishly grins at her, and shrugs, and takes a sip, “Well then, if he _does_ try to kill me, I guess I'll just have to try and kill him _back_.”

 

* * *

 

Nori Rison is not having a good day. He buries his nails in his palms, fists clenched and teeth splitting his lip open. He draws blood, this he's aware of, and for a moment he's breathless as Bifur Broadbeam stitches his shoulder closed. He lets out a noise (“Oh, _fuck_.”) only when Bifur splashes antiseptic on his newly acquired stitches, wipes them one last time and then places a gauze over them, and Nori vomits a string of curses past his bleeding lip. He gladly accepts both the glass of water and the towel Bifur offers him, and takes a sip to wash away the taste of his own blood, and then a second one to quench his parched throat.

He curses once more and bares his teeth in a snarl he leaves trapped in his throat. A hand to his eyes, for a second, and then he begins to stand.

Bifur places a hand on his healthy shoulder, freezing him in place with his knees half bent and both hands on the table, and Nori knows with the suddenness his muscles tense that had he not just been stabbed and had he not just received surgery in the shittily lit backroom of a Brighton toyshop, he'd have a knife at Bifur's throat in the few moments between Bifur placing his hand on his shoulder and him turning to look at him better. He does none of that. Instead, he just grins, and dips his head to the side.

“All right, I gotcha. No brisk movements, right?”

_For either of us_.

Bifur nods, Nori nods back and rolls his eyes to himself once Bifur's back is turned. Rison begins standing once more, this time as slowly as he can: his shoulder doesn't tug this time, and there's less pain radiating from the muscles between his shoulder blades. When he does stand, however, he nearly hits his head against a half-completed toy plane that's hanging from the ceiling.

Bifur signs quickly. Nori stares at him with the empty eyes of someone who has no idea whatsoever about what's going on, and Broadbeam sighs. Nori shrugs, shaking his head slightly.

“I don't... I don't fuckin' know sign language.”

Bifur raises both eyebrows in the universally known exasperated gesture of _No shit_. and then dives behind a pile of wooden crates to retrieve a notepad and pen. He quickly scrawls out

_MIND THE TOYS._

Nori blinks, squinting as he reads.

“What? Shit. Sure. Sure I'll watch the toys. No worries.”

He snorts and nudges a brush that's on the table he's leaning against. It falls to the other side of the can it's in with a clink.

_Some cover_. _What kind of assassin doubles as a toymaker?_

Nori leans over to peer at the plane better. There's little men in the little cockpit, their details finely painted down to the silver bands of their pilot's hats.

“What the fuck,” and Nori grins around the cigarette he's just lit himself, clenched between his teeth, when he sees them.

A tap on his shoulder.

_ANYTHING ELSE_?

Nori stares at the pad of paper and then at the man who's holding it. He thinks for a second and then clears his throat.

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

He waits while Bifur writes.

_WHAT IS IT_?

“I need access to your cousin's files.”

Bifur finishes reading his lips and then frowns.

“Oh, come _on_. Don't make that face. I'll pay you.”

_HOW MUCH_?

Nori grins and breathes in a bit too deep. He does not flinch, but he swallows hard, his muscles coiling around the wound, setting his nerves on fire.

“Shit. Five quid.”

Bifur raises his eyebrows, again. This time it isn't _No shit_., it's _You're full of shit_.

_BULLSHIT_.

...Close enough.

Bifur moves away from Nori and Nori has to close his eyes to avoid getting nervous. He can't breathe deeply, not with the nasty wound he got himself: not that breathing's a technique that's ever worked with him, stitches in his back or no. So he just trails after Broadbeam as Broadbeam sits at his workbench: Nori's blatant cue to leave. Instead, Nori places himself directly across from Bifur, both hands planted on the table, his face clearly in view. The smile he gives is sickly-sweet, the head tilt venomous.

“I just _rea-aaa-lly_ need to know the name of this one person.”

Bifur stares at him, deadpan.

_YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY_.

“Listen, I'll need your cousin's actual help for this anyway. You can split what I pay him.”

Bifur rolls his eyes-- _Lord grant me the bloody, fucking patience_.

He hesitates for a second, pen hovering over the paper, and slowly looks up to Nori. Nori's leaning his chin on the palm of his hand and, when they make eye contact, his grin widens and then slips into a pout. Bifur's face does not move a millimeter. He stares at Nori, Nori stares at him, Bifur blinks once, Nori's starting to wonder what the hell's going on, and then Bifur writes two words briskly and with the face of a man that's regretting his decision even before he's fully made it.

_WAIT HERE_.

Nori's smile widens, exposes his teeth, and he presses a hand to his chest.

“ _Thank you_.”

His gratitude is mock, his smirking almost comical. Bifur's vanished again, behind rows of boxes and crates, and emerged with a file box filled with paper and folders. He drops it onto the table (not before moving aside the dolls he'd been working on) and gestures at Nori.

_ALL YOURS_.

“You've got everything from 1970 to 1996, right?”

Bifur nods.

Nori chuckles, rolls up his sleeves (it makes him flinch) and starts to dig in.

* * *

 

**SIBERIA  
APRIL 12th 1995  
04:12 pm  
THREE YEARS EARLIER**

“Are your instructions clear?”

Bofur Broadbeam finishes fixing his goggles and making sure his coat is well shut. He glances towards The Lady, who is smarter than most and deadlier than many, squinting as snow relentlessly clouds her vision.

“Most definitely, ma'm.”

“You go in, eliminate Pirozhkov, get the intel and get out. No distractions. No side-trackings.”

“Yes ma'm. I'll be in and out in a jiffy, they won't even know what hit them.”

“I should very well hope so,” The Lady remarks, before climbing back onto her snowmobile and revving up the engine.

“Good luck, Broadbeam.” she says, and then leaves, a flash of taillights growing dimmer as the snow thickens and the distance grows too.

“Thank you, ma'm!” Bofur calls after her, quite certain she hasn't heard him. He sighs, sniffles behind his scarf and then resolves to turn himself, clumsily using his skis, in the direction the GPS tracker on his wrist is pointing towards.

“Here we go,” he mutters, planting his ski poles in the still thickening snow and pushing himself forward, into the icy depths of the Siberian tundra, one lonely April afternoon.

 

* * *

 

Across the vastness of incomprehensible, bone-crushing, morale-depleting, utterly fucking _depressing_ (and freezing, one must not forget the _cold_ ) whiteness, he seems to see the outline of windows, maybe a house and a chimney. Bofur presses his face to the GPS tracker, squinting to read it, and then exhales in satisfaction when it's clear he's in the right place.

“Piece of cake.” he mutters to himself, crouching low and making sure the guards posted outside don't notice him as he pushes himself forward. He whizzes past them, undetected and so utterly _white_ in his white coat and white ski gear, and stops a short while from the chalet, behind a rapidly growing pile of snow. There's lights filtering weakly from behind the white coverings on the windows, he can see them. For a moment he thinks about moths drawn to the flame and their death. Bofur quickly removes his skis, leaves them behind and blesses the weather for being as dreadful as it is. He saunters towards the house, making sure to steer clear of the windows, crouching beneath them as he creeps to the front, taking his gun out from a pocket inside his coat, quickly screwing its suppressor on.

“Apologies, lads,” he says, before standing up and shooting first the man closest to him, and then the one standing on the other side of the door before he can raise the alarm.

He grabs a smoke grenade from the hooks on his belt, and breaks the window with the butt of his gun to throw it through.

“Oh, this is _too easy_.”

While the panicked yelling begins he kicks the door open, gun blazing as the smoke clears.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Tonight's entertainment is brought to you by _mindless_ _acts of violence_!”

Bofur Broadbeam is many things-- he is an MI6 agent moments away from defecting, he is a brother, sometimes a cousin, occasionally an uncle, more often than not a nuisance-- but, most importantly--

he is _good at his job_.

The closest thug lunges for him, he shoots him between the eyes, grabs his body before he falls and uses it as a shield against the next three bullets that were aimed at him. He throws the dead man to the side, dives for the table, flips it to give himself cover, long enough to take aim and shoot the man who was ready to shoot him, once and then a second time just to be sure. He catches a glimpse of Pirozhkov run into another room. Someone comes at him from behind, and he turns and grabs their arm, snaps it clean in half, the bone juts out, they drop the gun they were holding,

“Apologies, darling.” Bofur dryly comments, before he grabs their face between his hands and twists their head, neck snapping like a twig. He hops out from behind the table, wielding both his own weapon and the one of the thug he's just killed, and as he pushes forward he hits another attacker in the face with the butt of his gun, shoving him to the side as he shoots whoever was coming up from behind them. He then finishes the one with the broken nose with a quickly placed bullet to the temple, before dodging a fist and feeling his back hit the door behind which Pirozhkov ran. He blindly shoots at the one trying to land a punch, hits him in the leg and once he's down kicks him in the face to shut him up from screaming, grabs him, if not unconscious then just _limp_ , and uses him as a potential shield, an arm around his neck, to skit close enough to the one who's just grabbed his gun. But before he can do anything, Bofur grins, chest heaving, knuckles white with the intensity he's clutching both guns with, and pulls the trigger in his face.

But Bofur's head snaps back when knuckledusters connect to his jaw.

He falls backwards, loses his grip on one of his guns, and can't regain his footing before what, for all intents and purposes, looks and feels like the torn-off leg of a chair collides with his stomach.

_Oh, fuck this_.

He retches once as the wind's knocked from his lungs, and then he staggers to his feet. It's the one he'd just used as a shield, and he's limping. Bofur catches his breath, leaning on both knees, and _smiles_ , because his attacker isn't doing any better than he is. And Bofur Broadbeam's lost no blood: this one has.

“ _Too-da-loo_ , my friend,” he whispers, and winks. And then fires.

He takes a moment to shed his coat and leave it folded on a table high enough to not get any blood on it. He cracks his knuckles, grabs whatever ammunition he can find and recharges his guns, sweeps his hair behind his ears, rolls up his sleeves and then stretches. He places charges in most corners of the house (one is hardly ever too safe).

He takes his shoes off.

Bofur slowly opens the door, making it creak as little as possible, and walks down a badly lit hallway to a door that's clearly closed from within. He crouches down in front of it and peers through the keyhole.

Pirozhkov, sitting, barking orders in Russian. One of his men on a large heavy handset, clearly transmitting whatever message Pirozhkov is trying to howl across-- an impossible task, and Bofur knows this, in the storm that's raging outside. No transmissions come in, none go out.

He sees another, who moves briefly in front of the door and obscures his vision, carrying a metal briefcase. There seems to be no one else.

“Bin, fucking, go.” Bofur murmurs so quietly his vocal chords barely vibrate, and he smiles. If he gets the briefcase, he's won, and for a moment, as sharp as any sound of a cracking whip, the _thrill_ at having managed to pull this off reverberates through his chest. He's about to disappear into nothingness with a briefcase full of MI6's most sensible intel: he's about to slip right _right under_ Galadriel Alqualondë's nose, and there is _nothing that The Lady can do about it_.

Three against one. As Pirozhkov angrily laments the lack of communications, Bofur closes his eyes and _breathes_.

He will open the door. First, before anyone can react, he will shoot the man trying to transmit the message. Then he will grab the one closest to him, to the right of the door, and before he can do anything, he will break his arm and use him to cover from any bullets Pirozhkov may be firing at him.

Or not-- using him as a shield might slow him down and hinder him, after all, exposing his side in ways he wouldn't feel comfortable about. And then Bofur remembers.

He has two guns.

He will open the door. First, before anyone can react, he will shoot the man trying to transmit the message, with his left hand, because the man is to the left. With his right hand he will shoot the man to the right, closest to the door, and then he will shoot Pirozhkov.

It is... a mildly less chaotic plan, with slightly higher chances of succeeding.

Still, three against one.

Bofur Broadbeam exhales.

He makes sure his hands are not shaking, grabs his lock picking tools and gets to work, he hopes, as quietly and as steadily as he can.

The door gets kicked open towards him, and collides straight with his face.

He falls back with a thud and his ears ringing, and then there is darkness.

 

* * *

 

Bofur opens his eyes to the neon light of the room he was watching from the outside. Something between his eyes, he figures it's his nose, is throbbing.

He blinks. He shakes his head. He finds himself face to face with the barrel of a gun.

“Oh. Hello.”

“Tell us who you work for, and we will be... more merciful than we intended.”

Bofur keeps on staring at the gun, “I can't... really... do that,” and then he looks to Pirozhkov, who's frowning at him with narrowed eyes.

Bofur grins, unaware his teeth are stained with blood.

“Sorry, lads.”

His first finger breaks before he can even realize what's going on. He screams, and then he quiets down, head falling forward as he tries to snap himself back into focus. Bofur closes his eyes, and breathes as it surges through him, the howl of his nerves in the depth of his now-mangled hand. _Oh_ , that'll hurt in the morning. Inhale. Exhale.

“Allow me to repeat the question, then.”

The idea that comes to him is almost painstakingly simple.

“No, there'll be no need.”

The man (he recognizes the one who was standing closest to the door) stops forcing Bofur's thumb in between the pliers he's wielding.

“You will tell us who you work for?”

“No, don't be ridiculous. I'll do nothing of the sort,” Bofur swallows and clears his throat, yanking his hand out of the other's grip and flinching, “I have a bargain in mind.”

Pirozhkov scoffs.

“A bargain?”

“You heard me. I have something you need,” he glances towards the briefcase, “... and you have something _I_ need.”

“The briefcase?”

“If you let me go and give me the briefcase, I _promise_ you you will never have to deal with Olorin Mithrandir's agents. Ever... Again. Or _anyone's_ agents, for that matter. I will make you vanish.”

Pirozhkov seems to ponder what Bofur's just said. He stares at the floor and then his head snaps back up.

“Break his other finger, he's pulling our le-”

“No! No no no! I am absolutely, _not_ , in any way, let go of my hand, you brute, _let go of it_ , _thank you_ , I am absolutely not pulling your leg, at all. I swear and promise I am your best, _if not only_ , chance at anonymity. All you have to do is let me go, and I will pretend none of this ever happened.”

“With the briefcase?”

“ _With_ the briefcase, of course.” Bofur grins, the pain of his broken finger making his chest heave quickly in small bursts. He's attempting to muster all the will he has in order to not let the pain go too his head _too much_ , and it's making the veins in his neck bulge. He swallows, and sweat drips down his temples.

Pirozhkov seems to think. There's-- a pause. Bofur waits, because he has nothing left to do.

“How can we trust you?”

“I can-- I can...” Bofur _thinks_ , frantically, “I _can_ tell you my name!”

The three pause to stare at him, and he hopes he isn't grinning _too_ desperately.

“If in a week's time you haven't fallen off the grid, you _absolutely_ can come and look for me.”

Bofur grits his teeth. Pirozhkov thinks for a few more interminable seconds.

“I am the only one who can make you disappear. Come on. You know this. You've probably already guessed who I work for.”

“Very well.”

Bofur exhales and closes his eyes and lets his head fall back.

One down.

“Good. Good. An _excellent_ decision, if you'd ask me. By far the best one you've made all day.”

As Pirozhkov's thugs untie him and circulation returns to his mangled hands, his finger screams even louder. He massages his wrist and swallows, and decides to tackle one problem at a time. He can still shoot with his good hand, and that's a _positive_ aspect. That's a _good thing_.

_Silver linings, Bofur Broadbeam, and all that crap_.

“Well then. The name's Bofur Broadbeam. How do you do?”

He outstretches his good hand and snatches it back when nobody shakes it, clears his throat, “Occasionally known as Silver Linings.”

All three furrow their brow, and share a nervous glance.

_Two_ down.

“Will that be sufficient? My boss tends to fret, a little, so I don't doubt she's already sent a team looking for me. So how about we end it here, lads--”

“With the briefcase?”

“Once again. With the briefcase.”

There is a moment, Bofur thinks, where it looks like Pirozhkov truly _does_ debate whether shooting Silver Linings is worth it. But then he remembers something (probably Rome, 1994, or maybe Bucharest) and he quickly nudges towards the table.

“It is yours.”

Bofur smiles like he's just won the lottery, “Thank you. Believe me, you will _not_ be disappointed.” and he stands, attempting to smooth out his wrinkled, torn, bloodied shirt, and then marches over to the table, handcuffs the briefcase to his broken hand, and curtsies to the three assembled. He picks his own gun up and leaves the second one behind.

Silver Linings, _silvertongued_.

“Well then, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure doing business with you.”

He walks backwards out of the room, just in case-- because sometimes you're never too safe, and feels the three of them's gaze following him even as he puts his coat back on, and slips his shoes on wobbling and cursing: tying snow boots with just one hand is nearly impossible.

Still he manages, and exits the house knowing very well he has the shortest window imaginable.

Time to trudge through the fucking snow with a broken hand and a busted nose.

_Anything_ to get out of this shit hole of a situation-- and if all goes well, The Lady won't be able to find him long enough for him to get his shit together and reinvent himself. A pity, through and through: he'd thought MI6 would have held his interest longer than it had: nonetheless, it'd been fun. Still, money is money, and he's seeking bigger thrills, at this point. Can't beat the dark side, and all that. He manages to make it to where he'd parked his skis, and gropes around until he finds the edge of a tarp, covered in snow. He pulls it off, and the snowmobile The Lady'd provided for him emerges in all its providential glory.

He's quick, now, and quiet. Ignores his hand, ignores his nose, takes off the GPS on his wrist and throws it as far as he can, and then quickly feels along the edge of the briefcase, now opened, for a small latch. He opens it and reveals a compartment. In it is a detonator.

Bofur Broadbeam smirks.

“Safe travels, Mister Pirozhkov. Off the grid you go.”

When he presses the small button, the chalet explodes.

 


	3. iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for violence, brief mention of torture.

**PARIS, FRANCE  
1998**

“You are _certain_ he's reliable?”

“Most definitely.”

Nori frowns at the payphone he's in, furrowing his brow at the handset. Not that Gloin Longbeard can _see him_ , of course-- but it's a start.

“Didn't Bifur Broadbeam guarantee for him?”

“It's his _cousin_ , of _course_ he's going to guarantee for him.”

On the other side, Gloin Longbeard sighs.

“Why not do it yourself, if you're so _fussy_?”

“Listen, I just needed to know he'll fuck him up enough. I don't want him bloody _dead_. Since you've worked with the wonderboy, I just wanted to know what you _thought of him_.”

“He... he worked fine, I guess? He's good at what he does. MI6 training, apparently.”

“Of course. Wouldn't expect anything _else_ from Silver Linings. Listen, I'm going to check on him. Thanks for the hint.”

“Don't call me again. I don't want to have anything to do with _any_ of your business.”

“Sure thing, Longbeard. See ya around.”

And with that he hangs up and steps out of the phone booth. He stretches his back, takes the time to fix his bun and starts making his way to the home where he knows Bofur's keeping Dwalin.

He climbs over the fence, curses when he skins his palms despite his gloves, and glances behind his shoulder to make sure no one's seen him.

“ _Parfait_ ,” and a small grin.

The window he decides to kick in breaks the air with the sound of glass being shattered by his foot. A few rats stir in the room he pokes his head in, before he kicks the remaining shards off of the window frame and forces himself through, feet first. Nori lands with a thud on all fours, and stands as quickly as he'd fallen. A quick hand to the back of his head to check the status of his hair, and then he's back on track-- not before he slips a cigarette between his teeth and lights it.

It's not too hard to find them: there's traces in the glass and debris, blood smears where he supposes Dwalin was dragged. Voices coming down from a hallway, he whips his head around to listen.

“So. It's, what is it? _Bofur_ , right?”

“Ah-ah, new rule. Torture victims don't speak.”

Scottish. Irish.

 _Bingo_.

He scuttles past a group of rats. The animals angrily squeak at him, and he snarls back. Nori leans back against the closed door he recognizes MacFundin's-- oh, fuck, is it laughter? Seven Hells, it's fucking _laughter_. Things seem to be going _exactly as planned, quite splendidly, quite wonderfully, definitely great_.

No hiccups here, none at all. None whatsoever.

 _Fuck_.

Nori growls, frustrated.

“No, come on. I want to know who hates me so much to lock me up in a room with you,” MacFundin's voice continues.

“Your mother, that's--”

Nori takes this as his cue to throw the door open, and then he steps inside.

“Me.” he announces, cigarette in his hand with a flourish. He sees who he supposes is Bofur Broadbeam (unless things have _really_ gone wrong) pull back, and blink, sleeves rolled up.

Bofur then furrows his brow.

“Were you just standing there the whole time waiting for the _right time to come in_?”

“Of course not,” Nori snaps, “ _now_ \--”

Dwalin MacFundin (who, just for the record, currently looks like a fucking _mess_ : pants and underpants down to his ankles, are those... _electrodes_? Shit, _they are_ , attached to his... privates, for lack of a better word, and a cut over his bruised eye that looks caked in blood. Lovely, really.) starts laughing. It is a _roar_ , loud and bellowing. Nori's eye twitches, and his skin feels like it's receding over his bones, mummified by the sheer force of his disgust and rage.

Bofur turns towards Nori again. Nori shrugs.

Dwalin finishes laughing and clears his throat.

"This. Oh God, oh my God, I'm sorry about this. I really. Am. But okay. Hold. On. __This is about Tallinn__ , isn't it?"

Nori swallows, and clears his throat, “As a matter of fact, ye--”

When Dwalin starts laughing yet _again_ , Bofur grabs Nori's shoulder and drags him across the room and right outside, behind the door. Nori thinks about stabbing him. Nori thinks about stabbing Dwalin, too. Nori thinks about stabbing a lot of people a lot of the time.

“I've been frying his balls for the last ten minutes, and he hasn't shut up. For one. Fucking. Second.”

“...I've noticed.”

“You tell him, Nori!” Dwalin cries out behind them.

Nori can't help but smirk when Bofur peeks into the room to glare at Dwalin, “If you don't shut your mouth I am going to stick an electrode probe up your _a_ _ _rse__."

“ _Racy, Broadbeam_.” is Nori's comment. Bofur blinks at Nori, somewhat betrayed, before Dwalin answers him: "You know what, I might even like it."

Bofur groans, pressing his fists to his eyes, “Do you _see_ what I mean?”

Nori arches an eyebrow, barely hides the smile behind a drag of his cigarette, “I paid you to... _fry his balls_. You're frying his balls.”

" _ _Yes__. But these, are not, acceptable, __working__ , __conditions__ ," Bofur hisses, and even his mustache trembles with exasperation as he punctuates every word with droplets of spittle flying from his mouth, fists clenched. Nori frowns at him and wipes the collar of his coat, not breaking eye contact.

“Couldn't you just _gag_ him?”

Bofur throws up his hand in response. Nori sees the teethmarks in it, and grimaces.

“Well that's just nasty.”

“ _Believe me_ , I've tried.”

But Nori's in the meantime devolved his attention to a loose thread on the collar he's just wiped down. He picks at it. “You know,” and glances back to Bofur, “I could always hire someone else and tell everyone that one of The Lady's best agents is a bloody traitor.”

Bofur's eye twitches. He swallows, and seems to ponder something, on the brink of speaking. He simply sighs, and clenches his jaw.

“Or...?” he asks.

“ _Or_ \--”

“Not to interrupt your little domestic- but I'm kind of starting to get hungry.”

Nori rolls his eyes. Bofur leans over to shout at Dwalin, “Can't you chew on your own tongue or something? That way you'll probably _shut up_.”

“How about you _try_ and make me shut up, your Irish bastard?”

Nori raises both eyebrows and sighs as Bofur storms back into the room.

“Just let me check, I might have something in my bag to make it _extra painful_.”

“Oh, _finally_. I was starting to get bored.”

When Bofur slams both hands on each side of the chair arms Dwalin's arms are tied to, Rison nods to himself and takes a drag from his cigarette.

Bofur narrows his eyes.

Dwalin smirks.

His forehead connects with Broadbeam's face, Bofur topples back, Nori sighs, and drops and crushes the butt of his cigarette under his heel.

 

* * *

Bofur stares at Dwalin from across the table. Although staring is much too _kind_ of a word-- Bofur scowls at Dwalin, deep and dark enough to burn the flesh right off his bones if he wanted to. Dwalin eyes him from over the rim of the glass of beer he's drinking, and _grins_.

“Come on there, Silver Linings. We've both had worse done to us.”

Nori squeezes into the booth, carrying his own beer bottle and a basket of fish and chips. Bofur begrudgingly scoots to the side to make room for him.

“ _Explain to me why_ on Earth _I'm having a beer with you_.”

“Try the fish, it's terrible,” Nori answers instead as he stuffs a potato into his mouth and sarcastically nudges towards the sign dangling over the bar, “English Pub? Yeah. _Right_.”

Bofur frowns, amazed, “What else did you _expect_? We're in Paris.”

“I just wanted decent food, that's all.”

Bofur opens his mouth to snap back, but Dwalin interrupts him: “All right, Cockney. Silver Linings. Break it up.”

“What d'you just call me?”

Dwalin puts down his drink to reply to Nori, “ _Cockney_. And if you want you can call me Scotch all Goddamn day. Anyway. I call for a truce.”

Bofur narrows his eyes, switching the hand with which he's holding an icepack to his face. He doesn't speak a word, but his expression's the loudest question mark there could ever possibly be.

“Cockney doesn't try to kill me, I don't try to kill him, I hold no hard feelings towards Broadbeam, and Broadbeam stops trying to fry my fucking balls.”

“I was being _paid_ to do it. Believe me, I'd go nowhere near your balls _willingly_.”

Dwalin raises his glass. Neither of the other two raise theirs, so he quickly turns the movement into a sip that he slowly steers towards his lips and that lingers a bit too long in that awkward pause between intention and effect.

“So. A truce, at least for the day. Then tomorrow it can all go back to normal, and we can go back to whatever horrible things we were doing before all this.”

“I never want to have anything to do with either of you, ever again.”

“Lovely, Silver Linings, the feeling's mutual. Well then that's sorted.”

Nori clicks his tongue and seems to snap out of staring at the pub sign, “Only if you pay for the drinks, love.”

And then, tone changing as he catches a glimpse of something or someone,

“Well I'll be fucking damned.”

“Deal.” Dwalin replies absent-mindedly.

“ _Cheers_.” Nori snaps, before jumping up from sitting and hopping over the table, knocking Bofur's glass over and the food clean off. Bofur stares at him, then back at Dwalin.

“ _What now_?”

Dwalin looks as confused and as annoyed as him. He sees Nori shove two patrons to the side to quickly reach a man at the bar. MacFundin shrugs and goes back to his drink, and picks up a piece of stray fish left on the table. He pops it into his mouth after having frowned at it for a few seconds. He grimaces, and Broadbeam tilts his head to the side.

“Tastes like it was cooked in fucking petrol.”

“Ah. _Delicious_. Probably was, given the smell.”

At the bar, Nori pulls a knife on the man he's talking to.

“Oh, _shit_.” Dwalin quickly stands-- he flinches at the pain between his legs, but swallows and steels himself and snaps into action. Bofur throws his hat back on, startled by MacFundin's sudden movement, and stands too.

Dwalin makes it to the bar as quickly as he can, given the circumstances.

“Listen, I just gotta know where Lucky is. He owes me money. He owes me _fucking_ money.” Rison's spitting.

“I don't _know_ where Lucky fucking is, I haven't heard from him in _weeks_. How did ya even find me?”

It sounds like Nori's found himself a fucking Yorkie in the middle of Paris, of all places and people: it seems half of London's twisted underbelly enjoys the refreshing turgid airs of the Seine. Dwalin ignores the man and plants a hand on Nori's shoulder instead.

“Coincidence is a _marvelous thing_ , Goblin.” Rison snarls in response, but Dwalin quickly speaks up: “We don't want any trouble today, _do we_ , Cockney? Let's go.”

Nori rolls Dwalin's hand off his shoulder quickly and briskly.

“Shut the fuck _up_ , Scotch. Leave me to this.”

But Dwalin's already herding him away, “I don't want any _fucking trouble_ , not tonight, Rison.” he snarls into his ear.

Goblin, behind them, catches a glimpse of Bofur and his briefcase. He freezes, and then smiles.

“Not so fast, actually. In hindsight, I think Lucky would _love_ to have a chat with you all.”

Some noises are, without a doubt, quite unmistakable. The sound a .45 ACP makes when it is being cocked is the sweetest and most poisonous sound Dwalin knows.

(That, and the sound of certain people's laughter).

Bofur freezes when he hears it, and it only takes him a minute to realize that most of the patrons have left, and that those who _haven't_ have just drawn their weapons, which they are now very currently and quite undeniably pointing at the three of them: Nori, teeth bared, Dwalin with his nails buried in Nori's shoulder and he himself, one Bofur Broadbeam, who's already had quite a very long day, thank you very much.

“Oh, not _again_.” Silver Linings mutters under his breath.

Dwalin's the first one to smile.

“You've fucked with the _wrong crowd_ , Goblin.”

“What? You think I'm scared of you? Hate to let you know, but you're outnumbered.”

MacFundin takes a second, and then lets go of Nori's shoulder, and turns, and grabs the barrel of the gun with a quick sweep upwards of his right hand, pulls down and then quickly bends Goblin's wrist backwards. His knee connects with Goblin's groin, and the man falls back with a whimper.

Bofur grabs the handle of his briefcase tighter, handcuffed securely around his wrist, and ducks a fist directed at his face, hitting his assaulter with the briefcase. The momentum of his strike pushes him back and Nori grins, free of Dwalin's grip, and buries his knife in his neck from the back, arms securely holding him in place.

“You _like that_ , love?”

The man screams, and Nori shoves him to the side. Goblin in the meantime's gained his bearings again, crawling into a standing position from off the floor where Dwalin'd left him. Nori notices just in time to duck his bullet to the face, the sound sudden as it tears through the table behind him. Dwalin grabs the man before he can fire a second shot and slams him into the bar, head first, once, twice, a third time, strong enough to break his nose and knock him out for good. Bofur avoids a chair to the back, pulls his gun out and lands a bullet to the thug's right temple before he can hit Nori-- enough time for Nori to throw a knife into the hand of the bartender, who drops the bottle he was wielding, screaming and clutching his offended appendage, before it can connect with Dwalin's face.

Dwalin's head snaps up, surprised, for the almost comical moment before he has to duck a blow to the face and land a punch to his opponent's liver. Nori sees MacFundin's hands shine kissed by the metal of knuckledusters as he holds his attacker down by his shoulders and slams his knee in the man's face. Then the twin glocks appear, pulled out of Dwalin's leather coat, with the names engraved on their barrels like teethmarks on a lover's neck, Grasper kisses a man's forehead, and he does not even have a moment to realize what's happening as the back of his head breaks wide open, the bullet hitting the wooden wall decorations behind him, and the man next to him finds first Keeper's grip to his jaw then its bullet to his temple, and something _stirs_ in the back of Nori's throat as he watches--

_Fuck._

_He's even better than I remembered_.

And with a grin that is dripping with the weight of violence pumping through his blood as screaming as adrenaline, Nori turns, and grabs the thug who was aiming for his neck with a garrote, and laughs as he drags him to Hell with him.

Dwalin glances to the side-- there's a bay window large enough to jump through. His balls will hate him for it. The entire lower part of his body will hate him for it.

If they're lucky, it'll be easy enough to break.

“Cockney, Linings!” he calls over the chaos as he ducks a blow and punches the offender, Nori's head whips up from stabbing a man through the chest, Bofur finishes hitting someone in the face with his briefcase and turns to Dwalin who yells, “ _This way_!”

Nori's quick to move into action, throwing himself towards the direction Dwalin's running. Bofur nearly catches up. And then he realizes what's about to happen when he sees the window, and--

“This is the _last straw_! I refuse--”

“ _Shut up_ , Broadbeam!” Dwalin bellows, grabbing Bofur by the arm and dragging him as Broadbeam screams,

“Oh for FUCK'S SAKE! If we _die_ , MacFundin--”

But it's too late, Dwalin's shot the glass to break it and he's crashing into it, Nori follows, Bofur wishes he were dead, or at home, or _anywhere but here_.

“SHUT UP, BROADBEAM!”

They land in a dumpster, and Nori's the first to quickly climb out. Bofur's the second, groaning, and Dwalin lands on the concrete with a thud shortly after. He has to lean forward and cringe, and moan, and when he hauls himself up he is _glaring_ at Bofur. Bofur shrugs,

“I was being paid.”

Dwalin narrows his eyes, doesn't reply, and then they have to _run_.

“Move it, MacFundin!” Nori calls over his shoulder, sharply turning into a side street before the three of them press themselves to the wall and wait for Goblin's men to run past. They lean over, desperately trying to catch their breath. Nori's still giggling, Dwalin presses a hand to the bridge of his nose and then over his eyes. He straightens himself up as Bofur catches his breath.

“For fuck's sake, what the _Hell_ 's in that briefcase? It hit me in the fucking face and nearly broke my nose clean off.”

“Did you know there was a bloody dumpster down there? You _didn't_ , did you?” Bofur asks instead of answering, pointing vaguely in the direction they've just come from. Dwalin shrugs.

“Lucky guess, honestly.”

Broadbeam has to stare at him for a full uninterrupted five seconds. Then he sighs and throws his hands up in what he supposes might as well just be defeat. Exasperation. Exhaustion. Basically, he's given up.

“ _You_ are the _luckiest_ motherfucker I've ever--”

“Listen, I'd _love_ to have this _riveting_ conversation right now, but if we don't move, they'll be on us in a split fucking second.” Nori's torn himself away from the wall and is already on the move. He speaks without turning around. He speaks without even glancing at them.

It's Dwalin who stares at his back as he breaks into a jog, and then calls out:

“I have an idea.”

Nori stops, and Bofur eyes Dwalin curiously.

“An idea?” Rison asks, turning.

“Yeah. Don't get _too_ surprised.”

“What's the idea, Scotch?”

“Well, we worked really, _really_ well back there. Really well.”

Nori sees where this is going, and lights himself a cigarette. Head bent back, he blows smoke, and then says:

“So we'd what? Divide the profits by three?”

Dwalin blinks, stopped before he can even begin to articulate the thought, and then shrugs, “Sounds only fair.”

Nori thinks, for a few seconds. And then his gaze falls to the spot between Dwalin's neck and shoulder, and he thinks he could easily shove a knife in there right now. Bastard cheated him of well earned money. Bastard also broke his hand and stabbed him in the back. He thinks a lot of things he could do to that neck, to be honest. He wonders how it's feel struggling for air beneath his hand.

A smirk.

“We'd give The Lady a run for her fucking money.”

“ _Not just her_ , Cockney.”

A wider smirk, and Nori takes a drag.

When he walks up to Dwalin, there're no knives in his hand, ready to be buried in Dwalin's neck-- there's just smoke, blown from Rison's mouth to Dwalin's face, and Dwalin clenching his jaw at him in reply. Rison smiles, allows the poison to drip from his eyes into Dwalin's lips.

“You have yourself a bloody deal, Scotch. Linings?”

“Absolutely out of the question.”

Dwalin groans and turns to look back at Bofur. Bofur, who's clutching his briefcase like his life depends on it (it _does_ ) and the two are ready to kill him for it (they _aren't_ ).

“Linings, c'mon. It'll be _fun_. Give G something to think about.” Nori chirps.

“I already _did that_ , thank you very much.”

“We work _fucking great_ together-- think of the _profits_.”

Bofur frowns at Nori.

“Think of the _fuu-un_.”

Bofur glances away, and winces. The cons: they're idiots, he works perfectly well alone, he doesn't need help, they might slit his throat and steal the briefcase. The pros: three pairs of fists are better than one, he'd _much_ rather have Nori Rison and Dwalin MacFundin as allies rather than enemies, and, all in all, they might be able to make a good deal of money.

And, of course, it'd fuck with G more than anything else in the world.

“ _Fuck_. Ah, what the Hell. What the bloody, fucking Hell. You have yourselves a deal.”

Dwalin snorts and throws his head back and steps, entirely without knowing it, into one of the worst decision of his life. And, to be honest, he's already made a few.

 


	4. iv

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for a torture description involving (attempted) eye trauma.

**  
OCTOBER 13 th  
**1999

“You know, I'm not a patient person.”

Bofur leans back in his chair and points the larding needle he'd been sharpening at Nori, “As if we didn't _know_.”

Dwalin snorts and stops pacing, one hand in his pocket, the other nervously holding a cigarette.

“We've already been here for _two hours_ , Cockney.”

Nori, after uncrossing his arms, grabs the chair directly behind himself, drags it a few feet and straddles it, arms once more crossed and resting on the back of it.

“Art can't be _rushed_ , _lover_.”

He stares intently, like an art critic evaluating a masterpiece, the toothpick slipping from behind his ear to between his teeth with a quick movement of his hand.

Dwalin grimaces at that last word.

“Listen, whatever he could've told us, he would've already done so. Just get the poor bastard off of there and let's go.”

Nori whips around, stays seated, “ _I wanna know where my fucking money is_ , Scotch.”

“No, you want to know where your fucking coke is.”

“Which I _paid for_. With _my money_.”

Bofur clears his throat, “Uh _uh_.” and tilts his head at Nori. Nori glares at him, turns around again, pushes his sleeves up and rests his crossed arms against the back of the chair. He runs the toothpick across his teeth, from left to right, and then back again, leaves it resting wedged between his two lower front teeth. He then stretches almost to stand, leans slightly forward and yanks the man in front of him, _hard_ , and the man screams as the meat hooks buried in his wrists tear through his flesh, bones and tendons.

“ _Hurts_ , doesn't it?”

Dwalin groans, “For fuck's sake, _Cockney_!”

Nori lets go of the man and raises both hands to show that he's _not touching not touching, not touching_ _ **at all**_ , “Just let me do my _job_ , Scotch.” he snarls, not looking at Dwalin, “an' don't grow a conscience when it _fucking suits you_.” is a mumble under his breath.

Bofur simply sighs and stands up to put his sharpening steel back into his briefcase. He pulls out his suppressor, walks back to the chair, and starts polishing it, glad to have had Nori take over in this absolutely _ridiculous_ endeavor. He eyes the open gym bag next to his feet, Nori's tools carelessly heaped inside it, and scoffs. _Sloppy_. _Chaotic_. Effective, certainly, but _at what price_?

“It's just coke. We can get some more, sell it for double the price.”

But it isn't _just coke_ \-- it is _pride_ , wounded in the depth of Nori Rison's scarred back and breathing lungs. Relentless and ruthless, it makes him. You do not _outsmart_ Nori Rison. You do not _wound him_.

“No, no, listen, _Scotch_ , he stole from me. I wanna know where my shit went. This is the _second fucking time_ this happens, lover.”

“Well, _lots of people want a lot of things_ , Rison.” Bofur comments, the _squeak squeak_ of the chamois cloth against the metal of his suppressor and gun the undertone that accompanies each word. The man on the hooks moans.

All three turn back to face him, as if they're suddenly remembering he's there.

“... _Right_.” Nori stands and kicks the chair to the side, body moving like a wave. Movements slow, movements quiet, and precise, and calculated in that quite peculiar way only he can. Like a dancer. Like an artist. Vicious, and fearful, and terrible. When he buries his hand in the man's hair, his brow is furrowed in concentration, fingers digging through the hair on the back of his neck, palm pressed to his cheek. The man breathes (and it may even be a sob), once, and Nori smiles.

“ _Hush_ , c'mon. Hush.”

Dwalin nervously takes a drag from his cigarette, “Rison, stop fucking with him. C'mon. He can't even talk.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” and then, back to the man, “Whose coke was it, love? Whose toes did I step on? Come on. Whose tongue do I have to cut out to get my bloody money back?”

He starts bending the other's head back very, very slowly, an inch at a time.

“C'mon,” he coos.

“Rison.”

Dwalin's word falls to deaf ears. Bofur's simply leaning back in his chair, polishing job resting disregarded on his knees. Nori grabs the man's face with both hands and yanks his head forward again. The man moans.

“Nice and loud, _good boy_.”

“You're gonna kill him like that.”

“Who took my shit? _Who was it_?”

“I don't-- I don't know.”

Nori drops the man's head altogether.

“Fuck. Bastard's still got some fight in him. _Listen t'that_. Yes you do. _Yes you fucking—_ ” when he reaches to grab the chains again, the man winces and screams. Nori's hand hovers an inch from the hooks, an eyebrow arched. He lowers his hand very, very slowly.

“You can make this stop, you know.”

Bofur leans back in his chair some more, enough to tip it slightly backwards. Dwalin waits: there's not much else he _can_ do, not much else he thinks is possible. Nori plays and plays well. Rison grabs a handkerchief, wipes the blood off the man's face, thumbs his cheek where the tattoo of a tear is barely visible against the puffiness of his eye.

“Who is it? C'mon. C'mon, love.”

He's grabbing both sides of the man's face again, angling him so the only thing he can do is look Nori in the eye. He starts pressing his thumbs into the other's eye sockets, and the wail that starts as a low scream becomes a single word: “Lucky! _Lucky_! It was Lucky!”

Nori lets go of him abruptly.

“ _Lucky_? Lucky. All right. Shit. You one of Lucky's?”

The man nods, “I can tell you everything. Swear to God. Everything you need to know. Just please don't kill me.”

Nori pulls back and laughs, shaking his head. “Fucking _Lucky_. You know, I really _hate_ Lucky. Really hate his guts. But see? All better.” he continues, with a smile and a pat on the man's cheek, and then he half-turns towards Dwalin. He's licking his lips.

“You know those thoughts, lover?” he calls across the room.

“Don't call me that.”

A curt, dismissive nod, “Whatever you want, lover. They're called intrusive thoughts, psychopaths have them an' shit, yeah?”

Dwalin crosses his arms and huffs, and gives Bofur a tentative glance. Bofur's only response is a shrug.

“I-- guess.”

“Yeah, _yeah_. Makes it real hard to control our actions, real violent, real horrible, yeah? Y'know those?”

“Yeah.”

“Real drag, aren't they?”

Nori pulls his gun out from the waistband of his jeans and shoots the man in the head.

“ _Oops_.”

Dwalin's burying his face in his hand. He rubs his eyes and then gestures at Nori.

“You know, you're not really the first person I'd pick as far as positive representation of psychopaths goes. As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure you _are_ a psychopath, actually, you're just a fucking asshole. Also, he's dead now. So now you'll _never_ know where your money is.”

“I'm not driving around with a dead body in the trunk of my car.” Bofur chimes in.

“Not your car, Silver. We _stole it_.”

“Shut up, Rison.” Dwalin's clambered up onto a chair, cigarette now almost a stub between his teeth, as he takes the body off from the hooks and tries not to gag while doing so. It lands with a thud and he hops off, “Really. Shut the fuck up,” wiping his hands on his coat with a grimace. Bofur's stood up and started packing his things up.

“Now what?” Silver Linings asks.

“Well, now I know who's behind this.”

Nori finally allows himself a cigarette. Dwalin sighs as he lies out a plastic tarmac sheet and grabs the body by the feet to drag it onto it.

“ _This_ being?” he asks, leaning back on his haunches, “And _help me_ , Rison, please? We're in this mess because of you.”

“Lucky's been stealing my money for almost a _year_ now. Asks me to work for him and then never bloody _delivers_.”

“And you still buy coke from him?”

“I didn't _know it was his coke_.”

Dwalin gestures at Rison while he's talking, beckoning him to help, and Nori rolls his eyes and crouches down at the other end of the body. Dwalin at the feet, Nori at the head. MacFundin nods, “Count of three. One, two, _three_ \--”

They both haul the body up a few inches and shove it onto the tarmac sheet. It smacks against the concrete underneath and leaves a bloody stain on the blue plastic. Bofur makes a face. Dwalin starts wrapping the body up as Nori stands back up.

When Rison looks at Bofur, both eyebrows raised, Bofur rolls his eyes.

“The answer is no.”

“I just need to see him for half an hour. Tops. C'mon. Help a friend out?”

“You're not my friend, Nori Rison.”

“Now what? We're getting _personal_?”

Bofur throws his hands up, “Fine. _Jesus_. But then I want nothing to do with it.”

“What? After _all_ we've been through together? Now where's the fun in going solo, Bofur? I can't work alone anymore, I'm too used to hanging out with _you two._ ”

“Oh for _fuck's sake_.”

They both turn towards Dwalin, who's opened the doors of the empty, derelict industrial garage they're in: it's storming outside.

Bofur groans, “ _Again_?”

“At least it's not snow,” Nori mutters as Dwalin walks back and grabs the body by the feet.

“Help me haul this poor bastard into the trunk, will ya? Since this is. Y'know. Your fucking fault.”

“We would've killed him anyway, eventually. But _sure thing_ , lover.” Nori purrs, and grabs the body by the head.

 

* * *

Dwalin leans back behind the wheel and huffs. Nori swallows, taps against the car window and, in the back, Bofur simply keeps quiet.

“We've got a body in the trunk of our car and nowhere to put it. At four AM.”

Rison doesn't answer Dwalin, presses a hand to his mouth and then wipes his nose with the back of it.

“Broadbeam, does your cousin also hide bodies?”

“I told you, we're just going to get you a name. Nothing else.”

Nori turns around.

“Then what do we suppose we do with the body, huh? You're involved too-- how much is it, for secondary liability? I think it's as much as whoever else did the murder. Apathy _pays_ , Silver Linings.”

Bofur stares at Rison, deadpan. He's _really_ not in the mood.

Then the window next to him is shattered, and someone grabs him by the arm.

“What the fu-”

But someone opens the car door and grabs Dwalin by the neck before he can say anything else, and he finds himself dragged through the mud in the middle of a rainy field in the London outskirts. Nori claws at the arm around his neck and the hand over his mouth, legs kicking wildly as he's also pulled out of the car. Dwalin groans, someone's foot connecting to his stomach, as Bofur scrambles to break free of the other's grip despite being halfway through the window already. He slams his elbow in his attacker's sternum and the man lets go abruptly, giving him enough time to drag himself out and land face-first in the mud.

“Fuck.”

Bofur scrambles through the mud on all fours before someone grabs him by the hair and drags him up. A knife, of course, in the single solitary end-of-town streetlight, aiming for his throat.

“Oh, for _fuck's sake_.” and he grabs his briefcase and aims for the other. He finds his side, hits his ribcage, not hard enough to knock him out but hard enough to blow the wind out of him, and when he's let go of, he finds his footing, and, half slipping, half stumbling, hits the man who's kicking Dwalin in the face with the briefcase. He turns, nose bloodied, and Bofur quickly ducks the second blow. Dwalin rolls in the mud, hands scrambling for purchase on anything that could be used as a weapon, and in the chaos manages to find a brick. He tears it out, hauls himself into a standing position, and hits the man in the temple with it. The one who had grabbed Bofur in the meantime's stood back up, too.

“Fuck me, _he's got a gun_!” Dwalin barks over the sound of the rain as he digs through his pockets, caught off guard, looking for his own guns. His ears are ringing, though, and his tongue tastes too much of copper for his comfort. Nori stands up, hands covered in blood, from the spot where him and his attacker had both fallen. He runs and quickly slides across the back of the car to slip his garrote around the man's neck. He pulls, hard, legs wrapping around the other's hips, as the other scrambles searching for the air that's just been cut off from his lungs.

“A little help here, _please_!” Rison calls out, trying to keep a hold of his grip on the wildly flailing man. Bofur and Dwalin quickly share a glance and then step into action, Broadbeam aiming with his briefcase for the kneecaps, ducking down to deliver his blow, and Dwalin having finally found Grasper, aiming for the man's face and marginally hoping he won't hit Rison. He hits the man's eye, misses Rison's left arm by a hair, and the two of them, Nori and the goon, both crumble to the ground, one dead, the other dragged down by the dead body's weight. Bofur sits up from where he'd ended lying flat in the mud, and a panting Dwalin offers Nori a hand to stand.

“Well shit.” Bofur mumbles.

Nori wipes his hands down on his coat, “What _the fuck_ was that?”

Dwalin catches his breath by leaning against the car, hands on his knees. “That, and I'm almost certain, was Lucky trying to get rid of us.” he lets out through gasps.

“Yeah. Or get fucking even.” Nori kicks one of the unconscious goons in the side, mud and blood and rain spattering his shoes. He leans down, checks for a pulse, and breaks his neck. Then he stands up again, turns to Bofur, and grins.

“Still don't wanna try and kill him back, Broadbeam?”

 

* * *

Bifur Broadbeam stares at the three men (two sitting, one standing) in his living room. Nori's feet on his coffee table as he leans back on his couch, pressing an ice pack to his jaw, Dwalin sitting next to him massaging his back, Bofur intently reading the titles of the books on his cousin's bookshelf, pressing gauze to the cuts on his face and arms where the glass of the window cut him. Bifur sighs and waits for Bofur to turn around again.

“Body still in the car?” he signs once he does. Bofur rolls his eyes and nods.

“Couldn't find anywhere. Raining.” he signs back.

“Why help Rison?”

Bofur shrugs, looking desperate, and his cousin snickers.

“What'd he say?” Rison asks, taking a drag from his cigarette. His wet hair's matted to his forehead, his braid let loose, red frames his neck when he swallows. Dwalin stares at him and swallows, too, and then also looks up at Bofur.

“Asks if the body's still in the car.” Broadbeam replies.

“Well of course it's still in the fucking car, everywhere's fucking _flooded_ , and then some goddamn assholes tried to _murder us_. That's why we're _here_.”

Bifur sighs and signs, looking unimpressed, “Anything else?”

“Anything else?” his cousin translates.

Nori leans back and stares at Broadbeam's cousin, “I need some... information. Just know who works where, who works for who, stuff like that.”

“You already asked.”

“You already asked.”

“ _More than a bloody year ago_! What the Hell is this?”

“Well then maybe nobody really _likes you_ , Cockney.” MacFundin snorts, smirking.

“ _Intrusive thoughts_ , Scotch. Remember, I've got a knife on me at _all_ times. Hate t'see it in your socket.”

Bofur intervenes, “No need to get violent, Rison. You've already done enough damage as it is.”

Dwalin rolls his eyes, still snickering, as Nori takes his feet off the coffee table and leans forward.

“His name's Lucky.”

Bifur pulls back and glances at Bofur. Bofur quirks an eyebrow.

“ _Lucky_?” Bifur asks.

“Are there any other Luckies?” his cousin replies out loud.

“Only one. He's enough.”

Bofur narrows his eyes and gives Nori a sideways glance, “What's going on?”

Bifur abruptly stands and Nori glances from cousin to cousin, confused, “ _What's going on_?” he asks again, irritation trickling into his words.

Bifur's hurriedly disappeared down the stairs that lead to his workshop: rickety footsteps against old wood, leaving the three on their own. Nori looks at Bofur, quizzical.

“Fuck was all that about?”

“I have no idea.”

Dwalin chuckles and stands, “Seems like you've gotten yourself in quite the mess, Rison.”

“Then it's too bad you're caught in this too, Scotch.”

“I ain't gonna help.”

“Not even after they tried to kill us?”

“I was fine with running into Lucky twice, Rison, and he nearly wiped the floor with us _both times_. I'm not doing that a third time.”

Nori stands, crosses the room and splays a hand across Dwalin's chest, “Sometimes I wish you were _smarter_ than this,” and then his lips are close to Dwalin's ear and his breath is low and hot, and his voice is a growl, and playing with fire's always been Dwalin's favorite thing (burn scars always look the prettiest), “ _But yes you will, Scotch_. Yes you _will_.” and he pulls back, “Besides, I know you're having fun. And what's better than _fun_?”

Dwalin looks away, shakes his head. He licks his lips, “Fuck you, Rison.”

“Well, _yes_.”

Bifur pops in again, anxiously holding a file. He walks in between Dwalin and Nori and hands it to his cousin. Bofur furrows his brow, recognizes the signatures on the first page ( _To the attention of Galadriel Alqualondë, Head of Secret Services. Sincerely, Elrond Peredhel, head of Scotland Yard and Operation I.M.L.A.D.R.I.S._ ) and grimaces at it. He flips through the pages and his expression progressively falls. When he reaches the end, he glances at Nori and then at Bifur, who nods, and lastly at Dwalin, who just looks confused.

“We can't do this.”

“So you _know_ who Lucky is.” Rison scoffs.

“Yes. And we can't do this.”

“Hand me that folder.”

“Rison.”

But Rison's already lunging forward, and he wrestles the yellow file folder from Broadbeam's hands. He frowns when he flips through it.

“There's no fucking _name_ here. There's basically nothing. Who the fuck is the _Mouth_?”

Bofur sighs.

“Exactly.”

“Who the fuck calls themselves _the Mouth_?” he asks while waving the piece of paper in front of Bofur's nose.

“Someone you _really_ shouldn't care about.”

“There's _nothing in here_. There's literally _nothing_. Not even a photo.”

“Then that should already tell you all you need to know.”

“There's an address,” Dwalin comments, reading off whatever Nori isn't wagging around.

“Shit, _where_?”

“I really don't think we should care. At all.”

But Dwalin loves riling Nori up, Dwalin loves to see him fall smack on his face. If he can mess with him, his day's that much better. So he grins at Bofur, who looks at him helplessly.

“MacFundin, don't do this to me.”

Nori however's digging through Bifur's penholders looking for something to write with. He rips a piece of paper off from one of the pages in the file he's holding (Bofur has to bury his face in his hands and sigh) and quickly scribbles it down.

“Fuck me. It's in the fucking London CBD. Cheers for this, Broadbeam. Fucker's gonna be loaded.”

Bofur decides it's time to ask his cousin for a beer. Bifur agrees and grabs one for himself. Nori tucks the address in his pocket and sniffles, wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

“One last thing.”

“What _is it_ , Rison?”

“We've still got Billy in the backseat.”

Bofur stares blankly at him for a minute, and sighs.

“Fuck's sake. We do.”

When Bifur looks at his cousin, it's with raised eyebrows and a foot tapping against the floor.

“We need your cooler.”

“A body?”

“Sorry. I'll make it up to you somehow.”

Bifur exhales loudly.

Behind him, Dwalin stretches, “Right. Who wants to help me get him out?”

Bofur places the beer bottle on the coffee table and sighs.

“I will.”

And when he walks past Nori, he _glares_ at him.

 

* * *

Bifur slams the cooler shut as Bofur finishes cleaning down his saws and putting them away. Nori's leaning back against one of the shelves in Bifur's workshop (still as messy as he'd seen it last) as Dwalin curiously watches the toy plane dangling from the ceiling as the cord it's attached to twists and untwists, up until it makes him nauseous. Then he blinks, and shakes his head.

Bofur sighs and snaps his briefcase shut with a flourish.

“Right. All ready to go.”

“ _Finally_.”

“We wouldn't be in this situation if you hadn't shot him, Rison.”

“We were _planning_ on _killing him_ anyway!”

“Could've been less messy.” Bofur snaps.

“C'mon boys, no need to argue,” Dwalin's putting his coat and gloves back on, “And can I ask you a question, Rison? Just a quick one.”

“Sure thing.”

“So you're planning on driving up to wherever this-- Lucky's working out of, and, what? Threaten him?”

Dwalin's the first in line as they walk up the stairs. Nori shrugs as he follows, “Dunno yet. Probably. He's got a shitload of money.”

“And a shitload of _guns_ , too. And hired goons. The bastard's fucking CBD, he's probably got his hands on anything he can. How're you gonna make this work?”

“I'll find a way, Scotch. No worries.”

Bofur waits until they're up the stairs before turning towards his cousin.

“I barely touched the body, gloved, I think. Rison did. No gloves.” he quickly signs.

“Shit. Sloppy. Almost amateur.”

“I know. We were planning on burning the fucker. I want Rison out of my hair, if he gets to Lucky I'm... mostly screwed.”

“I can have the Yard find some of the body.”

Bofur almost sighs in relief. His shoulders do sag, however, and he looks like he's just gained ten years of his life back.

“Thank you.”

 


	5. v

**ANNATAR ENTERPRISES**  
**MAIN BUILDING**  
**OCTOBER 19 th, 1999**

“Of all the terrible ideas you've ever had, Rison, this one's _got to be_ the worst.”

Dwalin takes a final drag from his cigarette and squares the building top to bottom from behind his sunglasses. He flicks the butt away and crushes it underneath his heel.

“And that's why it's going to _work_.”

Dwalin glares at Nori as he tucks his sunglasses in his leather jacket's breast pocket. He sighs, loud, and rubs his eyes with his index and thumb, “ _Jesus_ Christ.”

“Ready to clean a rich man's piss off the toilet seat?”

“I'm gonna fucking kill you.”

“You can _try_. Don't know how well it'll go, but no one's stopping you from trying.” Nori finishes tying his boots and stands back up. Bofur looks like he's just been stabbed in the back, repeatedly, with a rusty butter knife.

“No, this _is_ the worst plan you've ever had, Rison.”

“Now you're just taking Scotch's side.”

“No. This is the worst. I don't even know why I'm here. _Fuck_.”

“You're here to be a good samaritan and help a friend out.”

“You're not my friend, Rison.”

“Whatever you say, Linings. There'll be a _lot_ of money for us once we're done, though.”

Nori stretches, cracks his back and neck, rolls his shoulders and grins.

“All right, lovelies. Who's ready to get hired as a cleaner?”

Bofur simply drags himself up the stairs behind Rison. Dwalin stops halfway up the stairs, and he sighs. Three blocks down he knows what he'd find: as tall and as cold as he remembers it. Unwelcoming in the name emblazoned in gold letters on every business card and name tag. _Oakenshield and Co._

Funny how things decide to sit at the bottom of your ribcage, sometimes, and never leave.

He scoffs, shrugs Nori off when he calls him, and briskly climbs up the rest of the stairs.

 

* * *

 

How do you survive, when you've been told the moment you stepped out of the womb that you're destined for nothing but horror and rotting? Because that's how the world works-- it looks, once, at the middle child of three with a mother who works six days a week and sleeps her night shifts off on Sundays, at the boy who preferred to steal cars than spend eight hours a day at a desk in school, and decides, easy peasy, that they deserve nothing. _Less than nothing_.

It looks, and all it thinks is _they deserve every inch of poverty they have_.

Nori doesn't ask permission to smoke. He lights himself the cigarette even before the interviewer starts talking, leans with both elbows on the table, and dips his head, waiting for questions.

“And why would you want to take this job?” the middle-aged lady across from him asks.

Nori smiles, “Mostly I'm in need of the money.”

She sighs and pretends to read his resume, “Well then. Tell me about yourself.”

Nori's jaw spasms slightly, “What would you want to know?”

“Interests, family, anything you would like to tell me.”

Her tone is as sour and tired as her face is, lips tight over her teeth, eyes not even daring to betray a fraction of emotion, if there is any left in her empty, grey, eyes. Nori stares at them and swallows, trying to force himself to come up with something. Is it worth lying?

Part of him just wants to lay it bare, bones and sinew and blood and all, and show her exactly _what_ her high-brow, well-paying job keeps her safe from. Another part of him knows it's just not worth it. There's bigger, more important things occupying his mind now, bigger objectives, men in high castles clinging to the red balconies of their comfort and priviledge.

“Well. My older brother works at a bookshop. My younger brother's just turned thirteen.”

“And how old are you?”

“I'm twenty-seven, ma'am.”

“Have you had any employment in the cleaning business, prior to this?”

He steals his first car at twelve. He has his first drink at fifteen. He has his first fuck at fifteen. He has his first commissioned theft at seventeen. Dori tells him to leave the first time at seventeen. Dori asks him to come back home when he's eighteen. He tweaks the first time at sixteen. He kills his first man at nineteen. Then it becomes simple, like falling asleep, and he discovers he feels much more like himself when he's aiming a rifle at someone's head than any other moment in his life. He tried to get an honest job at fifteen, and they sent him away. He worked at a grocery store for a few months at fifteen, and then they sent him away. He's the first one they fire when there's cuts to be made, red-headed skinny street rat with sticky fingers and a sly grin the size of Heaven and the color of Hell. He tries to fit in, at fifteen, at sixteen, at seventeen. He tries to break his bones and mold them into the shape of something that isn't poor, isn't looked down upon, doesn't have a thick Cockney accent, he tries to force himself into something he feels foreign and alien and _wrong_ , leaves little dents of frustration on the outer layer of his soul. He tries, as hard as he can, and then at nineteen he stops trying at all.

“No, ma'am. I was mostly in delivery.”

“What kind of delivery?”

(The bone breaks in his hand. The bone breaks in his hand. The bone breaks in his hand).

His brain snaps into place when he remembers what he wrote on the shit CV he whipped up the evening before.

“Post. I delivered the post,” he blinks, takes a drag from his cigarette, he frowns, “Did that for a couple of years. Decided I wanted a change.”

“And you came here?”

“Why wouldn't I? You're one of the best businesses out there. Worth a shot.”

She is immobile, immovable, rock solid. With a movement as sluggish as the air that's seeping in from the vent above her head, and with eyes pinched behind the heavy frames of her glasses, she moves a hand to turn the page of his folder. There's not much on it anyway. Nori stares at her, as slow as the tides, and feels the energy beneath his hands begin to clamber its way up his shoulders. He watches the tips of his fingers: they shake. The tremor will spread to the rest of his hands. He swallows. He stares back up at her, the boil of his frustration barely a tremor kept at bay.

She is everything he knows he will never be, and he is more than happy because of it.

* * *

The young man in front of Bofur finishes reading his painstakingly crafted resume and finally places it down onto the table with an admiring smile.

“You have quite the impressive skill set here, Mister Pirozhkov.”

Bofur grins back, “What can I say? I've worked as a cleaner all my life. My mother had a dry cleaning service. It's in my blood.”

The man chuckles, “Tell us a little bit about yourself and your experiences, then. It says here you've worked for the government?”

Bofur nods, sits back-- he's kicked off the conversation admirably, now all he has to do is steer it in the direction he wants (or, more specifically _needs_ ) it to go.

“Yes. Mostly Vauxhall Cross. You know,” a smile, not too wide, not too sharp, that softens his features, “toe-to-toe with Double-o-seven.”

 _Especially since_ I was _Double-o-seven_. In a fashion. In a way. Bit more ruthless. Bit scarier. Didn't have the Bond look, unfortunately.

“Oh, I can imagine. Any secrets you'd like to reveal?” the interviewer asks, winking conspiratorially.

Bofur has to stare for a few moments. Is it the teeth? It _must_ be the pearly white teeth. Or maybe the smile, or maybe the tone. He's trying to be friendly. Christ all mighty, Bofur's landed one of the _friendly_ ones. He furrows his brow for a second and takes a moment to reply. It's not... disgust, that curls his lip, it's more _annoyance_ mixed with a hefty dose of simple confusion.

“No-- no, I was simply the second floor cleaner. Not many secrets to, uh, discover...” The man next to the one talking to him hasn't said a single word in the last five minutes. He's staring into space, arms crossed, eyes slightly closed, sniffling occasionally. Bofur allows his gaze to linger on him long enough to take him in and short enough for the other not to notice he's staring at his colleague (although Bofur has an inkling he wouldn't notice a pink elephant standing in the room if it sat on him) before looking back at the man he's technically speaking to, “...or reveal.”

“Of course, how silly of me. May I ask why you left,” and then he peeks down to read the fake name Bofur's listed on his fake CV, “Al... Alexis?”

Bofur clears his throat, “Mostly personal differences. Me and my boss couldn't really see eye to eye.”

“May I ask why?”

“I felt restrained, confined to a single job and duty. Wanted to expand my horizon.”

It gets so _dreadfully boring_ , sometimes, don't you think? Do this, do that, listen, obey, know you're being watched at all times because G approved your pre-training screenings mostly because he thought the agency needed someone like you, whatever that means-- Bofur always suspected it meant, mostly, someone capable of getting his hands dirty in horrible, terrible ways. You need a few of those ruthless ones. Silver Linings was one of them.

He sees the interviewer falter for a moment, “As a, as a cleaner?”

“That's why I left to seek greener pastures. Which has led me, among many places, here.”

“Well, it certainly is impressive. I'd assume it's hard to get into SIS regardless, either as a cleaner or as an agent.”

Bofur gives a small nod, “Thank you.”

“Tell me, _Al_ , what was your favorite thing about being a cleaner?”

Where to start? Do you start with the thrill of knowing you're the best person in the room for the job? Does it start with knowing you've got an entire agency waiting on its toes, tracking your every move? Is it the notion that you're the thing that goes bump in the night for countless people around the world?

“Knowing I was helping people, mostly. Making the building a cleaner place for everyone.”

There's a metaphor there and he's certain, but it's not the reasons he'd joined in the first place. He's there for the challenge and the thrill, for knowing he'd tricked his way in and he'd tricked his way out. Is it knowing someone saw you and guessed your potential, without knowing they'd pay for it later? Bofur Broadbeam carries a soul in his pocket, and it's his, torn and sharp and fallible, excellently his, unapologetically intelligent and sly.

G may arrest him, one day, but no prison cell will ever take away the notion that Bofur Broadbeam beat him _at his very own game_.

(Is it the same game that landed your cousin with a bullet in his brain? Is it the same game where your brother refuses to talk to you anymore? What game is that one? How did you win there?

He didn't. That is the truth).

The interviewer dips his head and Bofur has to cling to every bit of self-control not to laugh in his face, “That's a wonderful sentiment, Alexis.”

Bofur bites his tongue and simply nods in reply.

* * *

“Well then.”

The woman in front of him smiles, all pearly white teeth, and Dwalin has to try very hard not to snicker. _Worlds apart_ , he tells himself. Daddy dearest probably paid for her braces out of pocket.

“Yes?”

“In your application it says you... worked for some time for Thrain Oakenshield?”

He clears his throat, “A handyman, mostly.”

“Were you employed by any company during that time?”

He glances to the man next to her, fifty-something. Bored. Oh, _bored out of his mind_ : he looks like interviewing some Scottish bloke for a shitty position cleaning up brokers' piss is the _last_ thing he wants to do right now, like he's been dragged out of his tiny piece of shit of a cubicle and set right in the middle of a room full of neon, and those very lights (yellow and nauseating and so so _fake_ ) flicker across his glazed eyes with the same interest he's staring at Dwalin. Dwalin glances from him to her and back. She still hasn't stopped smiling. He gathers he should probably smile too. Swept to the side, a glimpse of crooked teeth, Crookston born and bred.

“I just-- made sure his pipes were fixed. Kept things tight and well-whizzing.”

(Sad boys with tight eyes and a smile too poisonous to be real.)

He stares her down and swallows, almost dares her to contradict him, almost dares her to _try_ , and he'd laugh at the euphemism if it weren't like rot at the back of his throat. _Fucking Oakenshields_. His jaw clenches, and she swallows, and his eyebrow, arched so perfectly, does not quiver an inch.

“Where are you from, Mister...” she squints when she reads the name, “MacTeineachan?”

He grins as he leans back, the chair squeaking uncomfortably under his weight. “Ed... Edinburgh.”

She stares at him as he pulls a cigarette out from behind his ear.

“Mind if I--”

The man shakes his head, “Not at all.”

Dwalin doesn't look at him as the man continues speaking.

“Is that all the experience you have in the sector?”

“I. Uh. Worked for a while as a... freelance handyman, if we could say.”

“Freelance?”

“Freelance. Yeah. _Yeah_. People needed something fixed, I came.”

(Mack at the gym says he needs something fixed. _Fixed_? _Like a pipe or a leakage_? Not quite. There's a bloke that needs fixing, so to speak. Needs a few fractured bones. You're good with your fists.)

“But you were never legally employed.”

“I fixed their sh...tuff, if that's what you're asking.”

“Did you finish college, Mister MacTeineachan?”

Dwalin exhales, “Never went to uni, no sir, but I _did_ get through college.”

He's lying, with a straight face and a shit-eating grin and a cigarette he's just finished lighting. Dropped out at 16: sometimes he wonders if he's just _trying_ to be the poster boy for disadvantaged youth. Maybe he's just a fucking mess.

 _What a load of fucking pretentious bullshit_. You're an _arse_ , MacFundin, and that's all there is to it.

“And why didn't you go to university?”

“Decided I'd fare better leaving Edinburgh and moving to London. And I did.”

“Did you feel like you did not have the... economical means to get through university?”

There's a _twinge_ in his chest: an eighteen year old boy with a jacket full of patches and the soles of his feet dirty with the blood of fascists. Antifa in his fingerless gloves and the mohawk on his head, anarcho-queer in his blood. Things... changed. People grew up. The face he makes, however, must still be the same, and the reaction it sparks is not identical, but the intention must be similar. The man in front of him raises both eyebrows at him. Dwalin can definitely feel his own eyebrows are furrowed-- he's not sure what face he's making, not entirely sure it'll get him the job.

“I had problems.”

“What sort of problems?”

He wants to snap _It's none of your fucking business_. He wants to tell them how the system didn't work, bore down on him, how he's found a much better education in the books he's devoured over the years than he feels any classroom could give him.

Dwalin clenches his jaw,

“Economical, partly. Ideological, some--”

“Do you have issues with authority?”

The spasm he sends through his jaw rides up all the way to his eye, and the twitch is slight-- too slight for them to see, but he catches a glimpse of it in his line of vision.

“No, ma'm. _Especially_ if the authority is paying me.”

* * *

Rison finds Dwalin in the hallway, leaning back against the wall.

“How'd it go?”

“I need a Goddamn beer.” Nori snaps. “Jesus. I hate them.”

“Gotta be more specific, Cockney. You hate _a lot_ of people.”

“There was a reason why I stopped going to job interviews. Did you get it?”

“Yes, surprisingly. I guess they want a thirty year old Scottish asshole cleaning up their toilets after all.”

Nori dips his head, “Congratulations. Sounds like they want a Cockney problem child too.”

“Won't you look at that,” Dwalin stands up straight, “Your ludicrous plan is one inch closer to being complete.”

“Sounds like it is,” and Nori cracks his knuckles. “I need a beer.”

Dwalin seems to think about it. His interviewer's teeth come to mind, and he shudders. “Fuck. Me too.”

“Make that _three_.” Bofur says as he closes the door behind himself.

“Any luck?”

“Plenty,” Bofur says dryly, “Congratulations, Rison. You've managed to drag both of us to Hell with you. Annatar Enterprises has a new cleaning team.”

Nori stretches and clasps his hands together, “Oh. This will be _excellent_.”

“I can't wait,” Broadbeam mutters. Dwalin snickers at his sarcasm. 

* * *

 

Oh, he's drunk all right-- Dwalin feels Nori's ribcage hover beneath his hands, Nori's back against the bathroom stall door. Nori grins, Nori smiles, Nori traces Dwalin's bearded jawline with a finger.

"You're drunk," is his chuckle of a comment, "I can taste it on you, _lover_."

This is always how it ends, how they find themselves, how Dwalin follows the rabbit down the hole. Nori grinds his knee between MacFundin's legs, and MacFundin's breath comes undone like it's breaking. His response is to wrap a hand around Nori's neck: it's Nori's turn to purr. Dwalin squeezes, and Nori swallows, and Nori shifts his weight and slams Dwalin against the wall next to the toilet seat. 

"Don't you  _dare_ , pet," Dwalin growls and Nori licks his lips, " _Dare what_?" he asks, one hand creeping behind Dwalin's neck. The stall is cramped and their elbows knock together, Dwalin twisting Nori's arm away from his neck and over his head before turning them, Nori finding himself once more with his back to the wall. Dwalin pins his arms over his head.

"You're drunk too, Rison."

"Who says I'm drunk?" Nori mutters as Dwalin undoes Nori's belt and lowers his pants. Nori drags Dwalin back up again, kisses MacFundin and buries his teeth in his lip, draws enough blood to taste it.

" _Shut up_ , Cockney."

A pause, where Nori's breath hitches and Dwalin's hand finds him between his legs and he  _hums_ , head bent back, Lucky forgotten, eyes lidded, a smile playing at his lips.

"Doesn't make me hate you less," he breathes. Dwalin's lips hover against his as he drops his own pants. Dwalin flips him around, Nori splays both hands against the wall on each side. Dwalin buries one hand in Nori's hair, tugs his head back so he can mutter: " _I know_ ," in his ear, and then Nori's clenching as he moves. 

* * *

Elrond stares at the leg in the middle of the side street and patiently waits for the boy next to him to stop coughing. Thranduil Greenleaf is leaning against his knees, inhaling and exhaling deeply, trying very very hard to get his stomach under control long enough for it to stop making his eyes water. He groans. Elrond wordlessly hands him a handkerchief to wipe his eyes with. Thranduil accepts it gladly and straightens himself out to the best of his abilities.

“Jesus Christ.” is all he manages to mutter. Elrond glances at him gloomily.

“Jesus Christ indeed,” he mutters to himself, gingerly circumnavigating the leg to dig through the dumpster behind it with a tentative, gloved hand. A finger pops out. Two more, three, a thumb. It's a hand. Elrond yanks it out, and the wrist and forearm come with it. It dangles in front of his face.

He stares at it. The hand doesn't precisely stare back, but the forearm sea-saws, delicately, in front of his nose, still recovering from the momentum of having been dragged out of trash. Peredhel drops it.

“All right. Fuck.”

He calls over the first officer he sees that isn't Thranduil, a woman who's currently talking to a bystander and barks out: “Get the SSU here. Have them pack this shit up. I want DNA samples on anything we can find.”

He wipes his hand down on his shirt and grimaces as he walks back up next to Greenleaf.

“Let's just hope it wasn't Spider,” as he snaps the glove off his hand, “ _Fuck me_ let's hope it wasn't Spider.”

Elrond sighs.

“You know what I hate, Greenleaf?”

He says it as he stares at the fucking foot in his direct line of vision.

“What?”

“My job. Don't become a police officer.”

Thranduil smirks and huffs out a small awkward laugh.

“Bit late for that.”

Elrond nods at him.

“Yeah. _Yep_.”

And he can't even bring himself to laugh.


	6. vi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for discussion in the first part of terminal illnesses and someone deciding to stop cancer treatment.

**ST. BART'S HOSPITAL  
OCTOBER 20th, 1999**

It's drizzling. He doesn't want it to drizzle. Drizzle drenches him, stiffens his neck, makes his nose runny. Drizzle has a kind of cold that always finds its way underneath his ear and in the patch of skin that's right beneath his left eye.

Drizzle makes him achy, and it makes the sky grey, and it always makes him feel like there's little use in anything at all anyway. It makes working sluggish and getting out of bed even worse.

Still, he doesn't know why he insists on bringing flowers. Would he even know they're there?

Would it even matter?

He has to pick up courage, difficult to find when his chest is an endless well of preoccupations. Worry finds him every morning and worry doesn't ever seem to leave: there's so much to take care of, so much to keep under control, so much to make sure it whizzes, works and rolls, so many million little things to keep from falling apart. And then, of course, there's the London fires and the hope The Eye is _gone for good_ (at what _price_ , at what fucking _price_?), and the emptiness it leaves in his head. They're picking up the pieces, now, wading through the stream to catch the last of the glass before it sinks to the bottom.

But for now, right now, there are only stairs that at this point he knows by heart: three flights, past the pediatric cancer ward, two rooms down past the middle aged woman and the old man with shaking hands, the door on the left, the drawings Elladan and Elrohir taped to it, and the quiet. And the _quiet_.

They say it won't be long now.

Elrond has to _brace_ himself, every time, before knocking, has to find whatever part inside of him is making his blood flow, and has to speak to it quietly, coo it out of its hiding place, until it crawls up into the space between his lungs, where his heart is placed, and force it into beating. Funny. He's never this scared on the job.

He knocks.

The nurse on duty tonight, Tony, opens the door and smiles at him.

“Hello, Elrond.”

“Hey Tony.”

He moves to make way for Peredhel. Elrond shuffles inside.

Elros is lying in his bed and a machine is breathing for him. His brother stares at him, for the fraction it takes his heart to howl, and then turns back to Tony. It is then that the bullet hits, because when you lose a brother it is _devastating_ , but losing a twin feels like the knife carving through his belly, left to live with half of his guts on the floor and his hands scrambling to keep the rest in. He's clinging to the flowers like they're his lifeline. He recognizes this, and he slackens his grip, and the flowers still don't stop shaking. There will be _time_ to mourn. There will. He knows this, he knows this. For now there's just chaos, every time he steps through, and the perfect library in his head finds all its books blown off from the shelves, finds all the papers discombobulated and running through the hallways carried by the breeze. There's blood blots there's ink blots where he's trying to stop them from running out the window. Hands stained, hands strained, so sad.

“Is he in pain?”

A rhetorical question. They don't know. They don't know, he stopped being responsive a week ago, “Won't be long now,” and they don't know. His choice, he thinks. Elros' choice.

_This isn't getting better, ever, and I'm tired of the chemo and the surgeries. What'll they give me? An extra month? Half a year? Like this? No. No. No._

“Hard to say. He's on morphine. That must be helping.”

“Yeah. I guess so. Can't really tell at this point, can we?”

“No. Not really.”

A pause. The weight of the world around his neck.

“Well. I'll be right outside if you need me.”

_Elrond._

Tony's left the room, and he's still clutching the flowers.

Perdhel doesn't look at the door, not when it'd opened, not when Tony had gone through it, not when it'd closed. He was staring at the flowers he'd brought the week earlier (he comes every evening but flowers are a weekly occasion), and now he's telling himself he should look.

He knows he can't spend his whole life running.

_This is my choice, Elrond._

He clears his throat.

“Brought you flowers.”

He takes out the old ones from the vase and throws them into the trash, clears out the water in the sink of the small bathroom in the room, fills it with fresh water, puts the new ones in. Elros doesn't move throughout, doesn't react, eyes slightly closed, breathing shallow through the intubation. He doesn't, he hasn't moved in a while, spoken in more. He just is, and he waits, and the morphine drips and drips and drips.

“Tulips. I don't know if they're in season, but it's what I found at five PM on a Saturday.”

He forces his tone into the shape of something happy, bending and moulding it until it fits the image he has of it. Shaky at best.

“We found a foot in the trash Tuesday.”

He says it matter-of-factly, pulling up a chair to the bedside, debating, for a moment, whether he should hold his brother's hand. He decides to: the contact, skin against skin, shatters something the minute it begins. Loosens the bones in his chest, leaves them room to rattle more freely. Elros won't squeeze back, he knows this, but he's there, physical and real, less daunting than the notion that they're just waiting for him to die.

His choice, though, and Elrond also knows he will have to find a way to come to terms with it. In time, perhaps.

He rubs his thumb along the back of his brother's hand.

“Celebrian says hi. Things with her are... well. They could be better. We're figuring things out. Lots of arguments.”

And now, the weather, as rain-filled as his shaky sigh.

“Arwen's started talking, a _lot_. Found a frog in the garden and decided it's her pet, it took us a half hour to find it (it was hiding under the couch) and another forty to actually _get it out of the house_. The twins, the _twins_...”

This is where his voice dies down. Some words you just can't use, their magic is too great. Some words are sigils to ward off the dark. Some words are sigils to bring it crashing in.

“Elladan and Elrohir are all right. Might bring them to visit on the week end... Depends on how you feel.”

He looks up and smiles at his brother. No reaction (of course there'll be _no reaction_ ), and for a moment he tilts his head to the side. He tricks himself into thinking he can see the eyes moving beneath Elros' semi-shut lids.

“What're you dreaming about, Elros? In there? Is it nice? Is it calm? I hope it's calm. Out here's a fucking shitfest.”

It won't be Spider. It _can't_ be Spider. Spider would mean The Eye isn't gone, and if The Eye isn't gone his whole life is a _fucking joke_. If the chopped up body is Spider's work, he's fucked. If the chopped up body is Spider, it means his job's never done.

If the chopped up body is Spider, it means he has to sleep with one eye open again.

Oh, for fuck's sake, it's been _over a year_. Over a year of silence. Over a year of dealing with other things, never worse things, better things, maybe even easier things.

(Is _this_ easier than _The Eye,_ Elrond Peredhel?)

(No. Nothing's harder than this.)

He sighs, lets go of his brother's hand, leans against his own palm, elbow now propped up on the mattress next to Elros.

“It's strange, without you.”

Always the same spiel. Always the same words. (But it got stranger as it went on longer, it got stranger and worse and heavier).

“I suppose it'll get worse once you're gone.”

He smiles, then, bitter, alone with his brother in an empty cavernous room, the world still rushing outside, the ventilator the last thing attached to Elros' body apart from morphine (they'll take the ventilator away, too, soon, and then it'll just be a waiting game, and his brother'll be free). Death brings you to a standstill in all sorts of limbos. This one is buried and bitter, and he doesn't know how it makes him feel, how he should feel about it, how, how, how.

He's just a brother, and sometimes that is all he can ask himself to be.

 

* * *

**SCOTLAND YARD  
OCTOBER 22** **nd** **, 1999  
9:30 am**

The coffee tastes terrible. Thranduil forces himself to swallow it down, grimaces and shivers. Chambers snickers, “That bad, huh?”

Elrond eyes him and then glances to the cup as he swallows a second gulp and bares his teeth in a grimace.

“ _Disgusting_. I've been here two years and it's never gotten better.”

Thranduil clears his throat. Twenty-three years old, and doors slamming closed still make him flinch, a year and a half later. When Elrond walks past him, he quickly straightens himself out.

“Sir, sir, there's. A thing.”

Elrond nods at him as he opens the door to his office, keys jangling and his sunglasses balanced on the bridge of his nose, “Good morning to you too. Give me a moment. Is it important?”

“Somewhat. Has to do with the FBI.”

Elrond temporarily stops trying to wrestle the key into the lock, “Excuse me?”

“No, the CIA, yeah, sorry,” Thranduil looks up from the piece of paper he was squinting at, and Elrond tries, _incredibly hard_ , not to flinch: the scar still looks fresh in the right light, burnt flesh still glistening. His left eye barely recovered, and he got to stay on the force only because he _begged_ , and because he is (or rather, was) Oropher Greenleaf's son. Jesus. All it took was a poor error in judgement on Elrond's part. On Gil-galad's part. On Oropher's. And now two of them are dead, Thranduil Greenleaf's face is burnt to a crisp, and he's nowhere near closer to getting his hands on the last of The Eye's agents than he was a year and a half ago.

All in all, life has been somewhat _disastrous_ recently.

“Right. Let's take it into my office.”

“No need, I've got you covered.”

A new voice, a new person. Elrond looks up from rattling his doorknob, and really wishes he could open the door in peace: the man standing next to Thranduil looks no older than twenty five and no younger than thirty. He's never seen him in his life, all finely trimmed mustache and hair swept back in a bun. American. Elrond pauses for a moment, blinks, and then arches an eyebrow.

“Who in God's name are you?”

Thranduil clears his throat, “That's. The CIA. Got here this morning.”

“ _The CIA_?”

“Esgaroth, at your service.”

Bard extends his hand. Elrond presses the tip of his tongue to the back of his teeth and glances down. He decides to take it, if only to avoid any international incidents that might happen. Her takes it, and the other's grip on his own hand is reassuringly tight.

The name, however, barely is.

“Es... ga... roth?” a glance from Thranduil to... Esgaroth, to Chambers in the background. He finally pushes the door open. Lord, he hates these kind of things.

“Do you, by any chance, have a _real_ name?”

“That's classified.”

“Ah. Of course.”

Elrond stares into space for a millisecond, and clenches his jaw very slightly. He then blinks himself back into existence and makes eye contact with Esgaroth again.

Jesus Christ all mighty. _Why_.

“...Will you three excuse me for a moment?”

He quickly slips into his office, drops his bag and coat on the chair across from his desk and dials a number on the phone. The tone rings for a few moments. Elrond stares at Esgaroth, Thranduil and Chambers from behind the glass window of his office, and smiles awkwardly at the three.

“Hello?”

“G, lovely to hear your voice. I've got a question.”

“Elrond?”

“Bingo, old man. Apparently there's a CIA agent _right_ outside my office. Know anything about that? If it's about The Eye, I'll take all the help I can get.”

“Ah, I'm happy to see the Master wasted no time at all.”

“I'm going to take that as a yes. Is it about the Eye?”

“Well you see, when you put on file that you'd found a chopped up body in a dumpster-”

“You... _really_ shouldn't be looking at classified Yard files.”

“We're Secret Service, Peredhel.”

Elrond sighs and presses his thumb to the bridge of his nose, rubbing the impeding migraine away, “...Of course you'll look.”

In the meantime, Thranduil awkwardly stands shoulder to shoulder with Esgaroth, watching his boss fret over the phone. He clears his throat.

“I'd... offer you coffee, but unfortunately it seems that today the machine is only capable of producing boiling hot swamp water directly from the bowels of Hell.”

Chambers snorts from behind them, where he's photocopying something, “It's true.”

Esgaroth looks from one to the other, “Well that's too bad.” he says, unimpressed. Thranduil deeply wishes he could evaporate. This is not exactly how he was planning on spending his morning, at all, ever, especially not babysitting a CIA agent (and he can't even suspect he's a fraud, because he saw the _goddamn_ badge), and not only that, but a CIA agent strolling into your workplace (as... _eventful_ as a workplace like the Yard can be, for better or for worse) is usually if not terrible, at least _bad_ news. Uncomfortable news. Inconvenient news.

“Yes. Yes,” Greenleaf awkwardly coughs, “Could we... know, why you're here? Or is that, also classified?”

“Depends on what your boss' boss tells your boss.”

“How do you know he's--”

“Logically speaking, he's phoning his boss.”

“Does the head of Scotland Yard even have a boss?”

“Everyone has a boss. Your boss has a boss. My boss has a boss. Even his boss has a boss.”

“...Plenty of people chop other people up. What made you think this one was special? Besides, _why_ would he be in Maine, of all places, and then come back _here_?” Elrond still hasn't sat down as he talks. Thranduil observes him pacing up and down the length of his office as far as the phone cord will allow him, one hand rubbing against his temple, the other holding the phone receiver. Up to the edge of the desk, then back, past the phone body to the other end, barely to the waist basked, and then back again. The silence drips between him and Esgaroth an unbearably slow pace. _Say something_ , _before the awkwardness kills you both_. Chambers shuffles by them with a pile of documents, sweaty hands holding heaps of paper, and Thranduil wonders if he's woken up at all this morning, or if this isn't some collective group hallucination. Lucky for him, Esgaroth seems as uncomfortable as he feels, which is, in and on itself, a meagre blessing. Not a victory, that'd be too much even for them: just a relative blessing within the grander scheme of absurd things that have happened in the past two hours.

“ _Who is this guy anyway_?”

“That's classified, Peredhel.”

“Classified. How can I help him investigate if whatever he's looking for is classified?”

There is a sigh on the other end, and Elrond's stopped at the height of his paperweight, tapping his toe insistently.

“Very well. Are you familiar with Silver Linings?”

“Some... what. Somewhat, yeah.”

“Well--”

But Elrond sees Chambers hand Thranduil a folder, and Esgaroth crane his neck to get a better look. The American's face _immediately_ lights up, and he grins triumphantly. Elrond narrows his eyes.

“G? I'll call you back.”

“But I was--”

“I'll call you back.”

Elrond quickly puts the phone down and opens his office door, “Mind showing me that one too, Greenleaf?”

“Right away, sir.”

“And Chambers, fetch our guest a cup of coffee, will you? I'd very much appreciate it.”

As Thranduil and Esgaroth shuffle into his office, Elrond thumbs through the file Thranduil's handed him.

“What is this?”

“DNA samples taken from the dumpster body.”

“Ah.”

Peredhel furrows his brow at the names.

“Wait a _moment_. This says Rison and MacFundin.”

“Yes?”

Elrond looks up, “Me and Lindir-- _fuck_. They were involved in some shit, right after the--” his voice trails off for a moment as his gaze hits Thranduil's scarred cheek, “...Eye mess. Some... thing in Estonia.”

“Were they?”

“They tried to kill each other, from what... the evidence told the Estonian police.”

Esgaroth lets out a single bark of laughter, and Elrond's already decided he's going to have to fight back the urge to strangle him from now on. It's too early for this. The CIA? _Seriously_? The CIA.

“I'm assuming you know something we don't.”

“The man I'm looking for is known for having worked with these two. Oh, how do we call them? The Golden Trio. There.”

“ _The Golden Trio_?” Elrond closes the file and drops it onto his desk, “MacFundin's got no criminal record. I checked.”

Esgaroth arches an eyebrow. “What? No, he's been active on and off since 1996.”

“Active since _1996_? MacFundin's got no criminal record. He's got no--”

And then Elrond pauses, and blinks. Sometimes he has ideas he knows are outlandish. Sometimes he has ideas he knows might very well be complete fucking delusions.

Or they might not be.

“Are they dangerous?” he asks it as he quickly throws his coat back on. Esgaroth frowns, “Depends. Rison's... he's colorful. The man I'm hunting's just as bad as him. MacFundin, some minor stuff. Mostly kills for hire. Some fucked up faces. Apparently was involved with a few redskin gangs in the eighties.”

“But _see_ , he's got _no criminal record_.”

At this point, Elrond's said it more to himself than anyone else. And then he laughs. Esgaroth narrows his eyes.

“Are you... all right?”

“I'm fine. If they're dangerous, and on the loose, I want them monitored. Check their most recent movements, where they've been sleeping, eating, the usual. No criminal record. Fuck me. At least it isn't Spider. _Active since 1996_. _No goddamn criminal record_.”

He points at Thranduil on the way out, “Make sure our friend here doesn't get into any trouble. Soon as you get a location, I want them under surveillance. The sooner we get rid of these three, the better. Ask Chambers if you need help. _No criminal record_ , Jesus Christ. _Active since 1996_.”

He's still mumbling to himself as he walks down the stairs. Thranduil hears him laugh bitterly, the voice of a man on the verge of collapse. Then his footsteps are gone, and Elrond Peredhel's just vanished.

“Right. Well then.” Thranduil looks to Esgaroth and clasps his hands together, “Since we've apparently just been assigned to this case, we better get to work.”

 

* * *

**SIS BUILDING  
VAUXHALL CROSS  
10:27 am**

“Morning, Haldir. Is your boss around?”

Haldir L. O'Rien slowly, slowly looks up from his desk at the man standing in front of him.

“I'm going to go ahead and assume you don't have an appointment.”

“I just need to ask her where G is. A formality, really.”

Haldir takes a sip of his coffee, “She's in a meeting. He's in his office. Is everything all right? You sound... cheerful.”

Elrond dips his head at him a moment before ducking behind the corner of “Defense mechanism, Haldir. My life is on the brink of collapse.”

 

* * *

Olorin Mithrandir, more commonly known as G, slowly, slowly looks up from his desk at the man standing in front of him.

“I will not bother asking if you had an appointment.”

Elrond smiles at him, desperate, and proceeds to sit down across from him.

“I'm here... let's call this an informal visit, shall we?”

His smile borders into a manic grin. G sighs. Elrond presses a finger against his chromed paperweight (a heavy ball of perfectly polished metal) and raptly observes his first knuckle as it bends backwards, poised at a ninety degree angle compared to the rest of the finger. Then he straightens himself up, clasps his hands together and leans on G's desk with his elbows, hands pressed to his cheek. A pause, mostly for effect if for nothing else, and then he begins.

“Why have MacFundin's criminal records been erased?”

G doesn't miss a beat as he lazily scans over the file he's holding, “I have _no_ idea what you're talking about.”

“The... CIA agent you decided to... deliver onto my doorstep _with no explanation_ this morning told me MacFundin's been active since _1996_. When I had to look him up in the database last year, which, I shall remind you, was _1998_ , he had no criminal record.”

G arches an eyebrow, “Really not your business, Peredhel.”

“Let me guess, get into a rich boy's pants enough times, and the whole world's at your feet?”

Oh, _he's still bitter_.

G scowls at him. Elrond sighs, and opens his hands, leans back in his chair (the leather creaks when he does so), crosses his arms.

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

“Shall I remind you that I am also of the... homosexual persuasion?”

“How do you know? He could be bisexual.”

When G doesn't react, not even smirk, Elrond breaks the eye contact and stares at the paperweight he was tinkering with earlier.

“I'm _very_ tired.”

“I can tell. What's been bothering you?”

Elrond grimaces at G, “Take your pick. Personally, I think I'll start with _I just found out the Secret Service is actively eliminating criminal records just because Thrain Oakenshield asked_. Also,” he nicks a mint without asking from the bowl on G's desk and pops it into his mouth, “What's the Golden Trio?”

“Excuse me?”

“Esgaroth, that's the... codename? Codename. Jesus Christ I can't believe I'm saying this, in real life. Of the man that came by this morning. He mentioned something along the lines of a,” and he brings scare quotes into this one, “Golden Trio.”

“You mean Broadbeam, Rison and MacFundin?”

“ _Broadbeam_? What?”

“Is something the matter? Peredhel, you've been supervising I.M.L.A.D.R.I.S., I would expect you to by now be aware you may not know everything about everyone all the time.”

Elrond decides to ignore the last part, focuses on the new information that's just been presented him, and then the realization hits him like a freight train, after he puts two and two together. A few familiar names. A few reports he'd had to sign. He doesn't... work, in contact with agents, after all. He just makes sure they're safe. G works with agents. The Lady. He just supervises.

He just makes sure they're _safe_.

“Oh. Shit. Of course. _Silver Linings_. Fuck. No wonder the name was familiar.”

“Once formerly known as that, yes.”

Elrond stares at G for a few moments. He debates whether snapping and demanding the answers he's looking for, and then remembers that the world he's playing in isn't one that was ever made for rules. _Your call, Peredhel. Your cards._

He takes another mint and swallows it without chewing.

“So who're the other two? I mean. All I know about MacFundin is that one time he and Oakenshield bashed some... asshole's brains out. And Rison's... a blank slate. All I know is he killed a lot of people-- Jesus Christ, G, the _CIA_ knew about this, and I didn't! I run Scotland Yard!”

So much for not letting it get to him. G puts his pencil down and folds his hands into his lap.

“ _Very_ few people know about them. We like to keep them... _hush hush_.”

“Why?”

G pauses. He appears deep in thought, chin bowed for a moment, and then he presses a button on his intercom.

“Haldir?”

“Yes, sir?” the voice crackles back.

“Bring me the folder on the Golden Trio, if you may.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Thank you.”

They wait in silence until Haldir knocks on the door, yellow paper folder in hand, and G lets him inside. Elrond blinks at it-- he's seen so many on his desk, over and over and over again. This one isn't any different, save for the fact that it's information he's not allowed to see, that hardly _anyone_ 's allowed to see. He sometimes thinks about how mundane the weapons they use are. A typewriter, a computer, a pencil. Paper. Folders. Twist them the right way, drop them where they should be, and you've ruined a career. Find the right pencil to sharpen, and you've got yourself a knife. Crawl through the underbelly, and rat them out before they rat you out. Avoid an international affair with a smile. Kill the agent sent to kill you with the knife with which you're cutting the roast you're going to serve them. Haldir hands it to G and then leaves. Elrond watches him walk out the door, one arm thrown over the back of the chair.

“I can't make sure things are under control if I don't _know things_ , G.”

“You mean you can't hunt down the Eye if you don't feel like you know everything you have to know.”

Elrond turns to face him again.

“That too.”

G glances at him as he starts looking for the page he needs, “Don't let this devour you, Elrond.” He says it almost matter-of-factly. He says it quietly, “The Eye has... been taken care of.”

“For now. And Spider's still on the loose.”

G tuts, and then turns the papers so Elrond can read, steers the subject away from uncomfortable deaths. “ _This_ is why nobody must know about them.”

Elrond grabs the stapled stack of paper and skims it, quietly.

“Fuck. They've been-- _Jesus_. All of this in just _two years_?”

“Roughly, give or take. A year and a half.”

“Fuck. Paris was _them_? Oh, of course they're the ones the Longbeard brothers hired-- _fuck_. Dewsbury? But we thought that was--”

“Cover up.”

Elrond clenches his jaw.

“Always for hire?”

“Most of the time.”

“Newham, _last month_. Tallinn in 1998. Dublin, of course. Rome. Madrid. Christ. Zamość was _them_? If anyone knew-- G, why haven't they been _arrested_ yet?”

And it's then that G sighs, and it's his turn to lean back, hands brought together, resting in his lap again. Elrond doesn't need him to tell him why. Predhel swallows, and stares into space to collect himself, and then asks,

“What did Broadbeam steal, when he defected?”

G sighs.å

“ _What_? What did he steal? What files?”

“Do you remember Siberia, 1995?”

“Don't answer a question with a question. You mean Pirozhkov?”

“Pirozhkov, yes. Broadbeam was sent to... retrieve. Some sensitive information. Instead the man saw it fit to disappear without a trace. With the briefcase he was supposedly supposed to get back for us. For a while we thought he'd died in the altercation. The chalet exploded, after all.”

Elrond moves his hand from covering his mouth enough to mutter, “Please define _sensitive information_.”

“Names. Aliases. Projects. Most of the information on A.R.K.E.N.S.T.O.N.E. A good amount of access codes. Shall I go on?”

“No, I get the picture. G, why not neutralize him?”

“Because he's made it clear that if he doesn't regularly check in with a number of people to whom he has entrusted copies of the documents within the briefcase, the entirety of the information will be released, up for grabs, onto the market.”

“... And you don't know who these people are.”

“No. He's hidden them well. Some of them are even dead, according to our records. We can't kill him. We can't arrest him. Our hands are tied.”

Elrond lets out a single, long sigh and wipes his hands on his shirt.

“Oh. _Oh_ , Broadbeam's smart, G. He's smarter than you, and the Lady, and anyone else in here. Shit. You really should've kept a better eye on him.”

“Unfortunately, or fortunately, half of Europe wants to get its hands on him. Including the Eye.”

“Sauron wants him?”

“Sauron's wanted him for a _while_. We're hoping she won't get him. But hoping's as much as we can do.”

G stands up and grabs a bottle of Scotch from the cabinet to the side, motions to Elrond if he wants any. Elrond shakes his head.

“What about Rison?”

G shrugs as he pours himself a glass, “Nori Rison grew up in Croydon, lower working class, middle child of three siblings, left home at sixteen and never looked back. You know how it is, it starts with the... _problem teenagers_ , it ends with the contract killers.”

“He sounds like he's damn good at it.” Elrond mutters, still looking over the file.

G seems to ponder his next answer, leaning against his cabinet, one hand folded behind his back.

“Well. He's ruthless, I'll grant you that.”

“So Broadbeam you can't catch because he's blackmailing you, and MacFundin you can't get because Thrain Oakenshield wants to keep his son's... _ex-boyfriend_ out of trouble. Don't give me that look, I'm paraphrasing. What's the deal with Rison? If you know so much about him, what's the deal with him? Why haven't you found him?”

“Because he's _unfindable_. He relishes in playing with us, he knows we know, and he's always been good at covering his tracks.”

Elrond smirks, “For now.”

“For now. The body in the dumpster was... uncharacteristically sloppy for the three of them.”

“Well then, lucky for us,” Elrond's stood up and he stretches with a sigh. “I've put Greenleaf and... Esgaroth on their tail. Esgaroth's here to hunt him down. You'd better let him know that you don't _want_ him to be found.”

G sighs and puts his glass down, “And what? Let the CIA know that a good amount of our secrets are in the hands of _an agent gone rogue_? I have... _just_ told you why we cannot do this.”

Elrond shakes his head, “I'll decide what to do with Broadbeam when I get to him, but I want Rison and MacFundin off the streets.”

“Peredhel.”

“They've _killed_ a whole lot of people, G.”

“I know. So have we.”

Elrond has to bite the inside of his cheek, wedge his tongue between it and his teeth, to avoid snapping at him. He inhales, thinks about the list. Closes his eyes, and a foot in the middle of a dumpster flashes across his retinas. He opens them again, and points a finger.

“I want them off the streets. I'm getting them off the streets.”

“Don't play with fire, Elrond. We don't want you to get burned.”

“Is that a threat? I don't intend on getting burned.”

And with that he's out of the office, past a slightly confused Haldir, his mouth still echoing with the taste of the mint candy, and his mind's churning a million miles an hour. And he is tired.

He is so, so tired.

 


	7. vii

 

**ANNATAR ENTERPRISES  
MAIN BUILDING  
OCTOBER 23rd 1999  
01:33 pm**

“Enjoying your cigarette break?”

Dwalin turns, startled, and Bofur laughs.

“ _Jesus shit_ , Broadbeam.”

“I didn't think you'd get scared so easily, MacFundin. Thought your nerves were hardier than that.”

Dwalin scowls, “What'd you _want_?”

Broadbeam's rolled the sleeves of his cleaner's uniform up to his elbows, “I've been mopping the perfect, _pristine perfect_ tiles of the second floor bathrooms for the last three hours, and I guess I just felt like taking a breather.”

Dwalin then shrugs, neck relaxed again, “Suit yourself. It's a free country.”

Bofur lights himself a cigarette of his own and leans back against the wall next to the fire escape. He stares at Dwalin with a half cocked smile, head tilted to the side, and then clicks his tongue. Dwalin frowns at him for a few moments, and then--

“All right Broadbeam, what's up?”

“What d'you think?”

“Excuse me?”

“This whole mess. This... undercover bullshit Rison's dragged us into. What d'you think of it?”

Dwalin stares at him, narrowed eyes and cigarette smoke creeping out from his nostrils, “We pretended t'be priests once, Broadbeam. We've done worse things than cleaning up brokers' piss.”

“But that was because the sod we had to gun down went to that parish. But this... it's aimless. It's pointless, Rison's delusional.”

“He says he'll get us a lot of fucking cash. A _lot_. And he's right, Lucky _did_ try to kill us twice.”

“Correction: he tried to kill Rison twice, and we were caught in the middle.” When all the reply Dwalin gives him is an arched eyebrow, he continues, “Rison doesn't even know what he's doing, MacFundin. Trust me. He doesn't know who he's going up against.”

“Three days ago you sounded like you were on board. If you don't like it, you don't _have_ to do it.”

Bofur doesn't reply at first, intent on smoking and probably thinking. Dwalin has to stop aimlessly inhaling tar and fine dust all packed in a tube and smirk at him for good, eyes narrowed. He's not-- it's not exactly a _conspiratory_ gaze, but it's a gaze, nonetheless, and his crooked teeth are closer to curiosity, the taste of it on the tip of the tongue behind them.

“All right, Linings. What d'you get out of this?”

Broadbeam glances at him from the corner of his eye. Eye contact isn't something they _do_ : you never know when someone might aim for the eyes (that, and of course, there's a certain aesthetic one ought to uphold--

You don't survive the game unless you know how to dance, and _pretentious asshole_ is most definitely part of the resumé. Pretentious assholes don't make eye contact).

 

* * *

 

“Okay. One tofu Lo-Mein, and one small coke.”

Thranduil stirs awake from his dozing to Esgaroth handing him a bag of Chinese takeout.

“Thank you.”

“No problem, Greenleaf.”

Esgaroth sits back inside the car with his own box of dumplings.

“Any movement?”

“None at all. Are we sure this is where they were seen last?”

“That's what your files say.” Esgaroth comments, munching down on his first dumpling. It bursts, and he has to quickly grab a napkin to limit the damage. Thranduil eyes him, struggling to open his packet of soy sauce as he balances the box of food Esgaroth just handed him on his knees and tries not to burn himself. He manages to open it, and messily pours it over his noodles.

“Well. Another day, another stakeout.”

Esgaroth snorts out a laugh in reply, “Done many of these?”

“Not really, no,” Thranduil swallows his first bite, “I've had a somewhat... tempestuous experience in the force.”

“Does that scar have anything to do with it?”

“We don't talk about the scar.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

 

* * *

 

Bofur leans forward, cigarette crammed into the side of his mouth.

“Well, you see, if by some miraculous machination Cockney _does_ manage to take Lucky down a peg, and in the highly hypothetical scenario that not only does he take him down a peg, but some way we manage to _kill_ the old bastard, I've rid myself of one big fucking problem.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. _Yeah_.”

“And what problem may that be?”

Bofur grins, and winks, “Classified, Scotch.”

“Lover,” a voice purrs from behind them. Dwalin turns his head so he can glimpse who's spoken as if he'd have to know, and Nori's leaning in the doorway, “I need your help.”

Dwalin groans, “I'm on _break_ , Cockney.”

“Precisely. Broadbeam, I need you too.”

Dwalin rolls his eyes and flicks the cigarette away, and when he turns he makes sure to _bury_ his gaze into Nori's. Wolves that snarl at each other and snap their jaws: as annoyed as Dwalin looks, Nori will always look more derisive, more taunting in a way that makes Dwalin's palms itch, whether to strangle or smack he doesn't know, all he knows is that he _hates_ the grinning, snapping, twitchy bastard, and it only gets _worse_ every time he falls into his bed. _What the fuck, MacFundin_ : he can hear Asunn's voice in his ears clear as day. It is the only voice in his head he will allow himself anymore. It is the only conscience he will allow himself to have: anything else is as dead as leaves in the dust, shadows melting into darkness.

“What do you need us to do?”

And Nori smiles, and Dwalin thinks he should really stop thinking with his dick.

 

* * *

 

“So. What is it that you do back in the States?”

A smirk from Esgaroth, “Classified.”

Thranduil stares, “I'll tell you about the scar.”

“That desperate?”

“That _bored_ , Esgaroth. Nothing's happened. Nothing's going to happen. We're just _stuck here_ ,” and he stares mournfully at the sign above the building they're waiting outside of, “In the grand shadow of...” a dismissive wave of his hand, “Annatar Enterprises.”

Esgaroth stares at the sign himself, sniffles, and then-- “ _Well_. I snipe, mostly.”

“Snipe?”

“Mhm. Yeah. Cock, aim and shoot. All for Uncle Sam.”

“Oh. I assume it's, well, it's a line of work. How does a CIA sniper end up in London?”

“Silver Linings, that's how.”

 

* * *

 

“I really don't understand what this is about.”

Nori tilts his head forward and grins at the man sitting across from him, “Listen,” a glance downwards at his name tag, “-- _John_ , we just need to... ask a few questions.”

Dwalin sighs, arms crossed, and Bofur sighs too. He's keeping an eye on the door of the storage room they're in, just in case. Nori hovers close to John, all grins and the echoes of laughter lacing his words.

“I'm sure you _know something_.”

“I'm a secretary.”

“ _Exactly_.”

John swallows and tugs his sleeves down, covers the tattoo of a stylized eye between his thumb and index finger. Bofur notices it, and Dwalin notices him noticing.

“Listen, I'll make this simple. We know your... _our_ boss as Lucky. We'd love to know him as something _else_ , too. Anything else. Bit more than a nickname, you know, makes finding out who he actually is _that_ much harder.”

“I could have you fired, you know. This is kidnapping.”

Nori rolls his eyes, “Oh, MacFundin, _do_ do me the favor.”

Dwalin steps forward and wordlessly grabs John's right arm, drags him out of the chair, twists it behind his back and slams him against the wall. He also slams his other hand across John's mouth to avoid having him scream out too loud, just in case, just because, and Bofur really does make sure the door is closed. John screams, predictably enough, and thrashes against Dwalin's grip: but Dwalin's got a boxer's grip and boxer's hands, and he knows how to _hold_. Nori leans against the wall, casually sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“You know, _John_ , I was really hoping it wouldn't come to this.”

 

* * *

 

“So Silver Linings did what? Kill a few people?”

“You... could say that, yeah. Did a bit more than that.”

 

* * *

 

“Come on, John. Give us a name. A name.” Rison croons.

“Never.”

Dwalin grabs John by the back of the head and presses him against the granite of the wall, leaves indents on his cheek and the taste of a split gum.

“Make it _quick_ , Rison. I can hear people coming.”

“All in good time, Broadbeam. Scotch?”

Dwalin doesn't need further instructions, and when he feels his fingers being grabbed, John squirms and thrashes, Dwalin's knees kicking his legs apart before the other can kick back and break his hold on him.

“See that? My Scottish friend here doesn't really _like it_ , when you get all...” Nori glances at Dwalin and then back at John, “... _squirmy_. So be a good boy and let us know what we want to know.”

John stares at Nori with eyes that betray only the deepest hatred and disgust. _You and me both, buddy_ , Dwalin thinks.

“No. I am _faithful-- I am loyal._ If she knows I spoke, she will--”

“If _who_ knows?” Bofur asks from over by the door. John glances past Rison, to Broadbeam, and _grins_ , “She who Arises in Might.”

There's a moment of silence, and then Bofur says, “Well fuck me. Then it's as I thought.”

Nori glances back at Bofur, who's gone as white as a sheet, and then goes back to John, a palm pressed to the wall, next to his face.

“Unlike my colleague over there, I have _no_ , _idea_ , _what that means_ , Johnny-boy. I'm gonna need more than that.”

John presses his lips together and shakes his head, and Nori Rison is so _tired_ of having to run after Lucky, all because of a few misplaced thousands of pounds. He nods at Dwalin, and Dwalin quickly bends three of John's fingers to the side. The snap, like twigs breaking only _louder_ , and Dwalin's hand goes back to John's mouth to stifle the scream. Nori's face is inches from John's, “All right. Is it _a little clearer_ how things are gonna work here, now?”

Dwalin moves his hand to allow him to answer and John catches his breath long enough to manage to spit at Nori. It lands on his cheek, and he takes a long, slow moment to simply stare at John, before using the knuckle of his thumb to wipe it away.

“Right. Let go of him, Scotch. Let go of him.”

Dwalin obeys, moves back and slips out of the flesh of attack dog, and when John collapses all he sees is a man cradling his broken fingers. Where did it _go_? Where did it all fall apart, slip to dirt, become bloodied and broken and mangled? Somewhere between his chest, he thinks, somewhere between when he used to know his rage and now, not knowing where to place it, all the boxes he had before leaving broken and shattered and left behind, trails of dust he forgot how to follow. He lets Nori take over, though, in grabbing John by the hair and pulling him along the floor to the metal table stocked with cleaning supplies. Nori unceremoniously slams the side of John's head against the corner of the table.

“Now listen here, Rison, we don't want a repeat of Backseat Billy.”

“I'm being _careful_ , Linings.”

Horrible people, doing horrible things.

 

* * *

 

Thranduil has to stare at Esgaroth for a while longer than he thought he'd have to. And when he _does_ decide to react in some way, he lets out a single, half-terrified, half-admiring whistle.

“All on his own?”

“All on his own. Wiped out,” and Esgaroth emphasizes it with a sleek movement of his hand, from his chest towards the windshield, “the whole group.”

“Fuck. _Fuck_. Why?”

Esgaroth shrugs as he munches down on a dumpling, “Apparently they tried to get to a briefcase of his.”

* * *

“Rison, that's enough.”

Nori abruptly lets go of John's head and wipes his knife and hands on a handkerchief, glancing up at Dwalin and then at John's broken fingers. When his gaze flickers back to Dwalin, it's heavy, lidded, riddled with mockery, “Pick and _choose_ , MacFundin, am I right?”

Dwalin, as usual, doesn't dignify him with an answer. It's not _worth it_ , in these moments. It's not worth it one bit. Instead he directs his attention to Bofur: “You got that?”

“...yes.” Bofur reluctantly mumbles reading off the writing on his palm, “Werner Dunkelstimme. _That sounds like a fake name_.”

“See, though? All it takes is a few good persuasive words,” Nori replies, patting Bofur on the shoulder as he opens the door, “Now we better leave the premises before people realize something's wrong--”

A last glance at the room and the barely-conscious man on the floor.

“Oh. I was forgetting. No loose ends.”

He pulls a gun from out of his waistband and walks up to John.

“How did you smuggle that int--” but he cuts off Broadbeam before Bofur can finish, “Incredible what people don't pay attention to when they don't want to, Linings,” as he screws a suppressor onto it. Then he pauses, for a moment, and Dwalin closes the door again, and no one's left the room yet.

“Shoot or break?” he asks, lips pursed.

“ _What_?”

“Shoot or break, MacFundin?”

“Shit. Uh-- shoot.”

Nori looks at him, and he is positively _beaming_ \-- “I do love it when you know what I want.”

* * *

Thranduil's already resigned himself to dozing off peacefully for the rest of the afternoon, when Esgaroth literally _leaps_ in his seat, as much as a man sitting in a car seat can leap, jolting him awake from his tentative beginning of a slumber.

“Fuck me sideways. It's them.”

“What?” Greenleaf asks, stretching.

“It's them. It's the goddamn Golden Trio.”

“Wait, _what_?”

And now he's _fully_ awake, scrambling to focus his eyesight, as miserable as it is with one good eye and one that's just getting worse (and he _should_ wear glasses, or contact lenses, he _knows he should_ ) and close enough, catches a glimpse of what might be a Bofur, coat pulled over him, newsie cap lowered over his eyes, crossing the street looking if not miserable, at least _nervous_.

“Shit. That's Broadbeam all right,” he lurches behind himself and grabs the papers scattered on the backseat, scrambles to leaf through them, stops on a blurry closed circuit camera photo, and squints at it, “Yeah. That's him.” and then he hands Esgaroth the stapled papers and start the car, “Off we go.”

“In pursuit?”

“In pursuit.”

 

* * *

“I do _not_ want to get my cousin involved any more than he already is.”

“I'm sure Bifur can handle himself, Broadbeam,” Dwalin mumbles as he discreetly scuttles to the side and throws the plastic bag containing their cleaner's uniforms into the nearest trash bin, “Rison, wanna get rid of that gun?”

“Quit being sloppy, lover. I ain't getting rid of my gun so close to Annatar. We should burn those uniforms.”

“Not enough time.”

“...Then if we don't get Bifur involved, who're we gonna go to?” Broadbeam asks.

Dwalin seems to think, and then he smiles.

“I know exactly who.”

 

* * *

“All right, I can see them.” Thranduil says as he parks the car, “They went into that block of flats.”

Esgaroth quickly glances at the street number and scans the street for an address name.

“Yeah. Wait here.”

“Wait, _what_?” the DI asks, as the CIA agent opens the car door and turns to reply: “I got this, Greenleaf.” from through his lowered window, “I'll be back in a second!”

Thranduil hasn't time to reply, and he presses a hand to his cheek when he sees Esgaroth slither into the door the three have just let go behind them. The CIA agent ducks into a corner, takes advantage of the dark space under the stairs to wait for the three to climb up them. He cranes his neck, head titled to the side, eyes closed, and tries to _listen_ and determine how many flights they've climbed up. He's almost _certain_ who they're meeting up with, but just to be sure, he slips his shoes off and creeps up the stairs, on tiptoes, waiting in between steps, lowering his breathing so it doesn't heave loudly past his nose, ducking around every corner he can, hunched over, _making sure_.

Thranduil leans back and waves at the old lady who trudges past with her walker. He debates whether smiling, but her disapproving scowl tells him not to bother. Is it the carton of Chinese food on the dashboard? Is it his feet on the dashboard? Is it just his existence as an individual below the age of forty?

Esgaroth sees the three stop on the fourth floor, a glimpse out of the corner of his eye. MacFundin knocks. Beorn MacMathúin disgruntledly opens her door, and finds three men staring back at her. Dwalin swallows, and clears his throat.

“Hello, Beorn.”

“Hello there,” she glances to Nori on Dwalin's right, “Nori Rison,” and then to Bofur on Dwalin's left, “and who I can only imagine is Bofur Broadbeam. Well if it _isn't the Golden Trio_.”

Esgaroth rushes down the stairs, shoes still in his grip.

Bofur nods his head, “In the flesh. Though I do prefer Silver Linings.”

“Cool. I'm Beorn, or Bryanna,” she steps aside to let them in, “I'm not going to assume this is simply a _courtesy visit_.”

“Ah. No.” Dwalin comments. When Beorn's clearly waiting for him to expand on his answer, he tilts his head to the side, “We. Need help.”

“Depends on what kind of help. Tea?”

Thranduil sees Esgaroth throw himself out of the doors, barefoot, struggling to tie his shoes and not get run over, “What in the--”

Esgaroth opens the back car door and rummages through the shit that's piled there, finds his duffel bag and pulls out what very much looks like a grappling hook.

“Oh. You are _shitting_ me.” Greenleaf mumbles. Esgaroth smiles at him, “Tactical ResqMax.” as if that would explain _anything at all_ , and Thranduil is left with watching Esgaroth zip away again, disappearing around the corner, to the back of the building.

 

* * *

“Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend?” Broadbeam asks, hands clasped behind his back. Beorn looks at Bofur, “Well. There's hardly any introducing to be had. You three're the Golden Trio--”

“And you're The Bear.”

Beorn smirks at Broadbeam, “The tattoo gave it away, didn't it?”

Two bears, climbing up her left arm: less than she's planning on having, but impressive nonetheless. The first one roars, its silhouette on her shoulder, the second one above it, walking right to left.

“Oh, not only that. You have quite the _reputation_ , miss: Vienna was quite the beauty.”

She shrugs, “Shoot a few bureaucrats, call it a day. Now Munich, Broadbeam,” and lets out a hiss of admiration, “now _that_ was a thing of beauty.”

He tips his head, a finger to the visor of his hat, “A man must do what it takes to survive.”

“All right, you two-- break it up.” Dwalin says, finally disentangling himself from his scarf. Nori waits in a corner, leaning against the cupboard. Beorn fills a kettle, sets it up onto the stove.

“What do you need?” she asks, wiping her hands off on a rag.

“Information.” Nori says from his corner.

“Doesn't help me, Rison.” Beorn replies, impassible.

“ _Werner Dunkelstimme_.”

Esgaroth rummages with his grappling hook, curses it for being the middle of the day, and roughly aims for what he hopes is the Bear's window. He fires, the grappling hook hooks itself into the small balcony's railing, and Bofur's head shoots up.

“Did you hear that?” he asks.

“Hear what?” Beorn asks casually, not paying Bofur much attention, and then more seriously, more her _proper focus_ , “Why on _Earth_ would you be going after The Mouth?”

Bofur listens some more, waiting to hear it again, and Esgaroth waits for the window to open, because _fuck him_ if they _haven't_ heard that, briefly glancing to the side to evaluate possible escape routes. If he dodges to the side quickly enough, leaving the hook, he'll make it to the car on time, and hopefully Greenleaf'll be ready to drive them the _fuck_ out of there before anyone in that flat manages to get their hands on them. Anyway. One step at a time, one thing at a time, one thought at a time. If he has to run, _oh well_ , but if he doesn't he has to find a way to inconspicuously clamber all the way up. _Inconspicuously_ , now that's a fucking mouthful, and that's the fucking _emphasis_. But inside, Broadbeam stares at the window and then turns his attention back to the living room they're standing in. “Nothing, I guess. Probably the wind. But _yes_ , thank you, miss. That is _exactly_ what I was also wondering.”

“Door's in the _wall_ , Broadbeam, if you don't wanna help.” Nori snarls in reply, and takes a few steps forward. He doesn't accept the mug Beorn hands him, “MacFundin said you can help.”

Esgaroth starts climbing, one foot after the other, shoes shoddily and hastily tied, hoping that no little old ladies will notice him and call the police on him. Now, _that_ would be awkward to explain, “You _see_ , officer, I'm technically working with the Yard, but no one except for the head of Scotland Yard, an intern and an officer really know i _exist_.”

“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” he barks out when he slips, cursing the rope as it hurts his hands (he forgot his _gloves_ , of course he forgot his gloves), nearly falling. Inside his shoe, he feels his toenail bend as his foot follows, and a grimace. Fuck him, good lord. And fuck Broadbeam. And Maine, _fuck Maine_ in Goddamn particular. _One two, Esgaroth. You got this._

Beorn pours milk into her mug and thinks, arms crossed. She thinks, for a second, and then pulls a list out from behind her phone book. She puts it down onto the table, and then pauses.

“What's in it for me?” she asks, both hands splayed, glancing up towards Rison.

“A share of whatever we can get our hands on.” Dwalin answers before Nori can. Nori glares at MacFundin, and MacFundin glares back. Beorn sighs,

“How much?”

“Thirt--”

“Ten. Percent.” Nori interrupts Dwalin, “We didn't pay Broadbeam's cousin, why should we pay her?”

“'Cause she patched up your mess on my _face_ , Rison. And because Bifur Broadbeam's got protection.”

Nori nudges in Beorn's direction, “I doubt the Bear needs _any_ knights in shining armour.”

Dwalin frowns, jaw clenched. He owes Beorn, for the help in patching up one too many wounds, for the respect he has for her skill and her ability-- a warrior knows a warrior when he finds one, and the skin peeling from her knuckles is enough to tell him all he needs to know. Street-smart, gun-smart-- he'd _hate_ to drag her into this.

And besides, she's Scottish.

“I don't usually supply this kind of information, Rison. MacFundin's right. You owe me.”

Esgaroth slips both feet into the railing on the side, holding on with his hands, uses the grappling hook rope as a harness and really, _really_ hopes that nobody will notice. When he glances up, over the edge to the tiny glass doors that give into Beorn's apartment, he catches a glimpse Broadbeam's shoulders, what he assumes is Beorn leaning against the table, maybe MacFundin close to her, and definitely Rison across from the two. A quick calculation: if he moves _now_ , the chances of any of them seeing him are-- well, they're not slim, but they're not _high_ , either, and “not slim” is so much better than “high”.

All right, here we go.

He quickly hauls himself up, climbs over the railing, lands face first onto the balcony, stands up and slams himself back-first against the bit of wall next to the glass doors, hiding behind a potted plant. He sighs in relief when he notices there's a thin metal jamb fixed to the wall. It's not enough to cover him _entirely_ , but it's a little bit enough to cover him _somewhat_ , and honest to God, beggars can't be choosers, _can they_?

Broadbeam turns his head again when he hears the sound of vases being moved, scrutinizes what he can see of the balcony, and Esgaroth feels every inch of himself collapse into his chest. _For fuck's sake_ , **no**. He holds his breath. He waits, hiding behind the hibiscus, thumbing the knife strapped to his hip--

“Linings, can you _please_ stop staring out the goddamn window?”

Rison's voice, muffled from behind the glass.

Bofur narrows his eyes at the balcony one last time and then shuffles away from the glass doors entirely. Esgaroth feels like his entire body is on the brink of collapsing, and the breath of relief he releases sounds loud enough to let _everyone_ know there's someone hiding on the balcony. As things go, no one notices, and he's free to try and glean at least something through Beorn's glass windows. Here we go. One two.

Oh, this job will get him _killed_ some day.

“Anyway. Dunkelstimme, or The Mouth, or Lucky, or whatever you want to call him,” Beorn twirls a pencil between her fingers and Esgaroth hopes he didn't hear right, “He's-- shit. I don't wanna know why you're going up against him, but I owe MacFundin a debt here, and he owes me one, so I might as well even my side of the bargain out now. When he's not parading around as the... CFO, or whatever he's decided to be, of Annatar Enterprises, he's one of The Eye's closest and loyalest shadows.”

Dwalin nearly drops his mug. Nori has to lean back, both eyebrows raised, and Esgaroth buries his face in his hand.

“Well fuck me.”

Nori's the first to say it.

“Now wait, hold on here-- if _I_ say it, I'm full of shit, but if _she_ says it, it's suddenly the truth?”

“Secondary source. More of a... confirmation, really. I'm not saying I didn't trust you, Broadbeam.”

“Rison, I worked for MI6. My information's pretty bloody accurate.”

Beorn clears her throat, “Shall we get back on track, gents? We've got a horrible man to who we want to do horrible things to to find, after all. I'd hate to have you at each other's throats before we do.”

 

* * *

“Christ on a bicycle, you're alive.”

“Did you just unironically say _Christ on a bicycle_?”

Esgaroth has to pause from climbing back into the car to ask this, as Thranduil fires the engine up and arches an eyebrow at him, “Yes. As a matter of fact. Anyway,” and Esgaroth's finally sat himself down and put on his seatbelt, “Find out anything interesting?”

“As soon as I have time to tell your boss what I've found, he's gonna shit himself.”

 


	8. intermezzo i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nsfw, warning for breathplay, bloodplay and _very_ aggressive sex

Nori bends his neck to the right, eyes lidded, loose hair cascading beyond his jawline, over his shoulder, strands of it sticking to his forehead, tangling with his throat, noose of red against an Adam's apple that's for now almost completely still. It bobs, once, and Nori tastes the blood flow past his teeth, mixed with spittle. He opens his eyes. Dwalin stares back from the bed, lying where he'd left him. Nori's flickering greens meet MacFundin's grays, in the space and the air that's between them, riddled with smoke from the cigarette Dwalin's just finished smoking, riddled with Dwalin's willpower wrapped around Nori's fingers like a leash, riddled with the heaviness that follows sex, the air becoming something else entirely, not to be breathed but to be _inhaled_ , indelibly marked with the noises Dwalin had torn out of Nori's throat with his hands and his teeth and his belt. Nori closes his eyes again, bends his head back with a sigh and then lets it flow, slowly, to the left. The blood from his bit tongue pools in his mouth. He parts his lips then, ever slightly, and the spit he lets dribble out is kissed pink, leaks down his chin, he feels it cold and wet, it hits his groin, the spot where the leg meets the torso, but most of it lands on his thigh. His hand moves without him opening his eyes, the back of it meeting his lips, he wipes his chin off and scrapes his knuckles with his teeth, and _knows_ Dwalin's drinking it in, naked as he is, the other's eyes breaking the skin near his collarbones like it were butter, splitting the flesh, carving a v to meet at the sternum and then down, past his breastbone, across the plain of his stomach, to his crotch. And Nori opens his eyes, heavy-lidded, and snaps his knees shut and then stands, and he flows like a shadow. He makes his way to the dresser next to the bed, his right hand lazily running up along Dwalin's body, fingers tangling briefly in the hair above MacFundin's crotch (and Dwalin, eyes closed, sighs), grazing his nails across his ribcage, feeling, for a moment, the pulse of MacFundin's heart against his palm, and then he's leaning down after grabbing the small knife on the dresser, his other hand in the meantime finding Dwalin's jawline and then his cheek, stopping to cup the side of his face.

“I could kill you now, if I wanted to.”

MacFundin's eyes fly open. Rison whines, low and guttural, when Dwalin's hand finds his throat and squeezes in response.

“No, you won't.”

And Nori smirks, swallows, Dwalin feeling his Adam's apple press against his palm. He tightens his grip, finds Nori's pulse behind his jaw, and presses down. Nori swallows again, this time with difficulty, still smirking, stomach tensing and releasing. Dwalin sits up and then is on his knees on the bed, his other hand running up along Rison's abs, the flow of it across his chest, passing his nipples, over his shoulder, Nori hums, Nori feels MacFundin's hand tangle with his hair. And then Dwalin pulls down and towards him, hard, bending Nori's head back and dragging him so his knees hit the mattress, still choking him, and Nori laughs as much as he can allow laughter past the hold Dwalin has on his neck, and the quiet groan of a man who's all but playing. Then comes Dwalin's breathing, hot and heavy, still smelling of smoke, against his ear, nipping at his earlobe, first, soft, then tugging down, biting hard, and Nori's mouth echoes with the sound of a whimper.

“You won't. You _need_ me.”

“Need you?”

Dwalin hums in assent, “You need me, Rison, because you need someone to land the punches, and break the ribs, and do all the dirty work when you don't want to get your fucking hands dirty. And at the end of the day, you need me to _fuck it all out of you_.”

Nori tilts his head back and lets him, then, Nori lets him press his thumb to his lips, part them, push them open, the pressure on his throat relenting, Dwalin's fingers now occupied with forcing Nori's mouth open, with feeling his tongue find his thumb, and then he slips two fingers inside, and Nori bites down, he bites down _hard_ , and laughs when Dwalin pulls his hand back with a yelp of surprise, and he laughs harder when he shifts his weight, and then Dwalin's on his back before he can react and Nori's straddling him, and Dwalin's grabbing his face and Nori's tearing his hand off of him, and the inside of his thigh as he moves brushes against a heaviness between Dwalin's legs, and Nori's laughing even harder, his hair covering his face, one hand pinning Dwalin's wrists over his head.

“I thought I'd have to shed more blood than this to get you _hard_ , Scotch.” he whispers, grinding, Dwalin's hips moving up to meet his, but then Nori stills and sits on his haunches just above Dwalin's cock and feels its weight behind him, semi-hard, as he makes himself comfortable sitting on Dwalin's stomach, and it's his hand on Dwalin's face, now, his thumb to his lips, his burning giggle, trailing over them, running along his jaw to the scar on his cheek that he'd given him, for a moment, then he moves his hand back, finds Dwalin's leg, finds his whimpering, finds his breath caught in his chest like a dewdrop caught on a leaf, as Dwalin bends his head back, lips parted, when Nori lightly scratches the inside of his thigh and wrestles the sound out of his throat like he's tearing the flesh with his teeth, like he's prying his mouth open, like he's ripping the tooth, and then the hand's gone, and it's back to his face. When the tip of Nori's finger touches the scar that crashes over Dwalin's right eye, Dwalin breaks one of his hands free and when it grabs Nori's neck again Nori does nothing to stop it, goes slack when it's Dwalin's turn to shift their weight once more, this endless heaving dance of power, when Dwalin slams him into the mattress and knocks his knees apart and bends them back towards his chest, pins them in place with his own body weight. Nori gasps and then chuckles, Dwalin's hand back to his throat, the other thumb running along his lips. He feigns surprise, but the mewl of pleasure when Dwalin bears down on his throat with his hand and feels Nori's breath grow labored is all real. He's exposed again and his heartbeat is once more stirring between his legs. Dwalin's fingers are back in his mouth.

This time Nori doesn't bite down, embraces the weight on his tongue, embraces every time Dwalin presses down and emphasizes every word of “Or I could take you right here, like this, Rison, fuck you until you can't _walk straight_ , until you can't _think straight_.”

Nori grins around Dwalin's fingers, eyebrows raised, stifling laughter, and then he moves his head and slips MacFundin's fingers out, and Dwalin isn't ready yet to tell him that he can't. So he waits, and watches, and feels his hands burn with the urge to hurt Nori as much as he hates himself for wanting him. Little _twitchy_ monster, with the taste of every soul he's ever taken on every fragment of his freckled skin. Nori coos, an obscene sound, and Dwalin wants to burn the grin off his face.

“All _dogs_ have expiry dates, MacFundin. I might need you now, but once I'm through,” hand to the nape of Dwalin's neck, dragging him down so his lips can whisper into his ear, “But once I'm _through with you_ , lover, I swear I'll cut you ear to ear.”

 


	9. intermezzo ii

A pause. In the dialogue, in the words, in the pleasantries, in the venom she sharpens her knives with. She is the first to smirk and the last to lean back, head held high, back straight, nails pricking into the chair's arms. Lacquered, red like the bottom of her heels that click when she crosses her legs. A pause.

He serves her tea.

She accepts it with a small nod.

“Something _very_ interesting happened to me yesterday.”

Shelob Örümcek finishes stirring a cup of tea she will not drink, and then matter-of-factly places it down on the coffee table next to her, “Oh?”

Werner Dunkelstimme observes the movement of her hands and then glances back at her. He grins, sarcastically inconvenienced, “ _Very_ interesting indeed. A janitor, the poor thing, found one of my men. Dead. In a supply room.”

Shelob's smile is as comforting as it is warm, which is not very much at all. She exhales. She inhales. She exhales again. “How. _Unfortunate_.” is her comment.

“Coincidentally enough, three of my newest employees were a no-show today.”

“I'm sure either Goldmünze or Gundabad will take care of them quickly enough.”

But the Mouth shakes his head, and raises both eyebrows when he grins wider. “No, no. You'll want these for yourself.”

Now he's caught her, and her gaze lights, her eyes flooded with interest. She crosses and uncrosses her legs again, shifts her position, and Werner leans forward, beckons her to do the same. Always so dramatic, the man-- still, she finds it difficult to deny him. Not when he's _titillating_ her like this-- not when his eyes are glinting just one shade too honestly.

This excites him, and she is intrigued.

“I checked their names. Just in case. Just out of curiosity. Who'd want to kill one of ours, right? You'd expect people to know better.”

“Get to the point, Dunkelstimme.”

He leans over the side of the armchair he's sitting in and pulls a folder out of his briefcase. Shelob leans back again and accepts it, opens it, starts reading. She pauses, looks up, and frowns at him. He delights in this, biting his lower lip, and she arches an eyebrow.

“None of these are people I recognize. There's not even a photograph.”

He shrugs, “Fake names, all three of them. No records match up, if you dig well enough. But if you dig well enough, you can also find out who they actually are.”

“And I'm going to assume you _know_ who these actually are. What's so important about a single dead secretary?”

He raises a finger to silence her. She clenches her fists and has to bite her tongue-- _no one silences her_. No one should even _dare_ , and Werner knows how much he's playing with fire.

“Why, the person that _killed_ him, of course. We're never interesting until we're dead, and then we're only interesting because we're a prop in someone else's story. No one cares about the body-- everyone wants the murderer.”

The last flourish of a magic trick, hand diving back into his briefcase, emerging with three photographs. He makes to hand them to her, pulls them back at the last moment, “I expect only immense gratitude for finding this for you, Örümcek.”

Her fingers hover an inch from the photos he's holding, “Feel grateful that I haven't killed you, _yet_.”

He shakes his head, “ _She_ needs her Mouth to speak.”

The smile never leaves either of their faces.

“She needs her Spider more.”

“Tell that to Ungoliant.”

A pause, where Shelob narrows her eyes and clenches her jaw, and the smile changes in taste and in flavor-- sheds its poisonous charm, remains only an empty shell and the bones creaking under your shoes, “-- _Give me the photographs_.”

He finally complies, leans back and crosses his arms as she scans the first one.

“What am I looking at?”

He smiles and leans forward again, tapping a finger on the top of Dwalin's bald head, “Number one, Dwalin MacFundin. Fistfight happy Scotsman, thirty-five years old, Glasgow born and raised, Londoner by choice,” she moves on to the second photograph, he continues, “Number two, Nori Rison. Twenty-seven years old, London blood through and through. A knife-obsessed sniper. _Incredibly_ easy to get money out of him, may I add, I'd say it's pathetic if it weren't so funny. And number _three_ \--”

She looks up very, _very_ slowly, and Werner almost explodes in delight, “Bofur Broadbeam.” she says before he can say anything, her voice already alit with a smile. A real one, this time, in all its almost infantile delighted glee.

He cocks an eyebrow, “Thirty-three.”

“MI6 agent gone rogue.”

“Silver Linings, on occasion, and the deadliest Irishman you will. Ever. Meet.”

“You're _certain_ it's him?”

“Don't you recognize the photo? It's all him. It's all there. Briefcase. Et al.”

She grins, then, and giggles. The Mouth presses his palms together, jiggling one of his legs in excitement.

“Oh. Bring him to me, darling. _Please_.”

“By the way things are looking, I'll expect them to come popping by my home anytime soon. Last time they were seen, they were meeting with MacMathúin, and she knows where _everyone_ lives.”

“Right to our doorstep.” the Spider says, raising her cup of tea and finally taking a sip.

The Mouth does the same, and gives her a curt nod: “ _Right to our doorstep_.”

 


	10. viii

**SCOTLAND YARD  
OCTOBER 23rd, 1999  
10:14 pm**

“Make it quick, I only have ten minutes.”

Elrond, holding a mug of coffee, walks by Thranduil and sits himself in his chair. Esgaroth stands next to Thranduil, across from Elrond, on the other side of the desk. Neither of them budge. Elrond takes a sip of his coffee, grimaces at the bitterness, and then opens the day's paper-- which is, quite frankly, completely worthless, as the day's about to end. He eyes the two over it, and arches an eyebrow. He waits. Thranduil, at last, clears his throat.

“So we followed the Golden Trio.”

Elrond nods as he forces himself to sip on his coffee, “Good, since that's what I ordered you to do.”

The sarcasm doesn't go amiss, and Thranduil narrows his eyes, “Yes, right-- so they're working, or worked, I don't know, for Annatar Enterprises. At least they came out of an Annatar building,” he clears his throat again, “and--”

“They went to see the Bear.” Esgaroth says, arms crossed, interrupting Thranduil. Thranduil sighs, “Yes, they did. Then Esgaroth pulled out a grappling hook.”

Elrond stops reading and looks at the two, from Thranduil to Esgaroth and then back.

“A grappling hook? I don't want to know. Continue.”

“So they talked to the Bear,” Esgaroth resumes, “And well, first off, they're looking for someone.”

“Who?”

Esgaroth tilts his head, “Well, it's complicated.”

“I _really_ don't have time for this, CIA.”

“They're looking for The Mouth.” Thranduil blurts out. Elrond takes a pause, then, in which he doesn't reply, doesn't react, and simply looks at the two men in front of him. For a few seconds.

“The Mouth.”

A word. That's better than complete terror-inducing silence.

“They're going after The Mouth.”

Both Esgaroth and Thranduil nod.

“You're telling me that Dwalin MacFundin, Nori Rison, and Bofur Broadbeam, collectively known as the Golden Trio, are single-handedly going up against The Mouth, who may or may not still be working with Spider, and the only thing standing between those imbeciles and _utter_ annihilation is me, you and Yankee Doodle over here?”

Thranduil and Esgaroth share a glance, weighing Elrond's words.

“Well--” Esgaroth starts,

“...yes.” Thranduil finishes.

Elrond sighs, and puts away the paper.

 

* * *

 

**OCTOBER 24 th, 1999  
03:21 am**

“Something tells me we're not... doing... _everything_ according to plan.”

Nori's “No shit, Broadbeam.” is muffled, as his tongue hits the bottom of the flashlight between his teeth. He squints in the darkness, and shuffles closer to the car door.

“Also I distinctly remember, Rison, that our new good friend of ours Beorn MacMathúin told us _specifically_ to wait for her before doing anything rash. Or stupid.”

Nori glares up from the car door he's currently trying to break into, and nods. He pulls out the flashlight from his mouth and remarks: “True. I'm also not really a patient person, Linings.”

“You could follow plans, for once. It might even do you some good.”

Nori ignores him, going back to work-- the car door finally opens and he stands back up. Dwalin straightens himself up from leaning an arm against the roof of the car and stretches.

“You coming, Linings?”

“Why do you do _everything_ he tells you to do, MacFundin? It can't just be the sex, you're smarter than just being in it for the sex. Do you hate yourself? Is this some way of punishing yourself for some terrible thing you've done? Are you a closeted Catholic?”

Dwalin sits himself down in the driver's seat. He then bends down and sets himself to work for a few seconds on the cables. He hits his head only once, and curses loudly. Then the car grumbles for a few moments. Then it rumbles to life. Then Dwalin pulls himself up and presses a button to unlock the other doors, and Nori can finally slink in in the back. Dwalin then glances at Bofur from across the passenger seat, lowers the window from where he's sitting and enjoys every slow second that passes by as it goes down far enough for him to be able to lean across the passenger seat and then slightly lean his head out the window. Bofur frowns, and his hat and the streetlights kiss his face sunken with annoyed disgruntled shadows. Dwalin stares Bofur square in the face,

“Are you coming, Linings?” he repeats, slower.

“Does he _pay_ you? Is the sex payment? Is that how this works? I thought he wanted to kill you.”

“Ride's about to leave.”

“ _Of course_ I'm bloody coming.” Bofur grumbles, opening the door on the passenger's side after Dwalin sits back upright, “God forbid you all get yourselves killed without me.”

 

* * *

 

“Let's stop here.” Nori leans forward, places his head in between Bofur and Dwalin. His hair's untied, for once, and he brushes it behind his ear. Dwalin glances sideways, and then nods.

“Whatever you say. You're the mastermind of this entire operation.” he replies, pulling over. The street is empty-- it's early, it's rainy, it's fall. The sun isn't out and won't be out for another few hours. It's just them, a few streetlights, a shitty stolen Prius, and the cars parked in a neighborhood where the worth of a single square foot could buy them bail ten times in a row. _Classy_ , as they call it. High-life. Nori finishes braiding his hair as quick as he can.

“We should hide the car.” Dwalin comments, tapping against the steering wheel and peering at Nori in the rearview mirror.

“Nonsense, lover, we need a quick and easy escape route.”

“Right. I forgot you two are planning on making it out of this _alive_.”

Both Dwalin and Nori turn their heads and stare at Bofur. There is silence: as they call it, a _comedic pause_. (Wait for the punchline, there's always bound to be a torn limb or two). Bofur sees them out of the corner of his eye, as he stares ahead, for a few seconds, and then seems to hesitate. He shuffles in his seat, sniffles, considers opening his mouth to speak long enough that he parts his lips, and then just clutches his briefcase on his knees tighter.

“Just expressing an opinion. That's all. I just personally believe that if we'd followed _the plan_ \--”

“Well we're not _following the plan_ , Broadbeam. Put these on.”

Nori stuffs a balaclava in Dwalin's hand and drops the second one onto Bofur's lap. He bunches up his braid, wrapped tight, against the back of his head, and then stuffs his face into the ski mask. He then exits the car, the first one of three. Bofur watches him slink in front of the car and then stop to wait for the other two. Broadbeam then turns to Dwalin as Dwalin puts his own mask on.

“You're too calm.”

“Linings, not right now.”

“Are you high? Are you? You're high. I mean, you do recognize Rison is insane, yes? We'll all die.”

Dwalin tilts his head to the side, now just a pair of eyes floating in a black mask. Bofur patiently waits for an answer. For a moment he seems he won't get one.

“I'm gettin' real tired of how wishy-washy you're being-- But we're four of the best bastards in the game. It takes a little more than a few henchmen to take us down.”

He most definitely isn't going to get one.

“First off, I agreed only because we were _following a plan._ Secondly-- No, no, there's something else-- _this_. It's different from all the other crap we've pulled. This is borderline suicidal... And you're just blindly running into it, MacFundin. That's not even stupidity, that's--” Bofur licks his lips as if he's just been hit by a realization of sorts. Dwalin sees it, and tilts his head to the side, “What're you _running from_ , Dwalin? A broken heart?” Dwalin hesitates and Bofur grins, “ _Well then_. What was his name? Or hers, you know, sexuality's fluid and all that, I'm not one to judge, live and let live, yada yada ya--”

Nori knocks on the driver's side window, “Oi, you two coming or not?” is muffled by the glass. Dwalin flips him the bird, Nori answers in kind.

“Name's Blue Eyes. We broke each other's hearts, and that's all you're going to know,” Dwalin sighs from behind the balaclava, “You've had almost two years to ask me that. It's a bit late for it now, don't you think?”

And with that he's out of the car, door slammed behind him, and Bofur's on his own to put his mask on.

 

* * *

 

“Sure this is the right house?” Nori sniggers under his breath.

“Beorn doesn't make mistakes.” Dwalin snaps back, willingly deaf to Nori's humor, the balaclava pushed up to his forehead so his face's free, before he sinks down to one knee and gets to work on the backdoor lock. Behind Nori and himself, Bofur finally climbs over the metal fence. He lands with a curse, and his briefcase thuds with him.

“Do you _always_ have to carry that thing around with you?” Nori whispers at him.

“You'd be surprised how often it doubles as a weapon. Blunt force and all that. Really, a miracle. Oh, poo. I stepped in the begonias.”

Bofur scuttles up to them wiping dirt off the back of his pants and then wipes the dirt from off his shoes on the stone step that leads to the door, forcing Dwalin to move slightly.

“Oi, _watch it_.” Dwalin hisses, shuffling to make room for him. Bofur shrugs at him and Dwalin scowls, getting back to work. He clamps the tip of his tongue between his front teeth to concentrate, turns the torque to the side and slips the pick in, “Now _quiet_ , the both of you.”

“Sure thing, just be quick.” Nori replies.

“All in good time. _Art can't be rushed_ ,” Dwalin parrots back at him, and Nori frowns, as Dwalin feels with the pick for the pins within the lock. He falls still for a second, listens for any movement there could be inside, behind the door they're trafficking with, and then, satisfied by the unassuming silence, goes back to work. The first click grants him a triumphant smile, the second that follows makes the smirk only widen, and at the third, when the door finally yields under his touch and opens with the _clack_ of victory, he stands up, and the only word that could be used to describe his face is _smug_. Nori arches an eyebrow at this, despite the ski mask that he's wearing,

“Stop _grinning_ , lover, before I rip that smirk right off of you.”

“Oh, nonsense. A simple thank you will suffice.” Dwalin winks in Nori's face and then opens the door for him, mock curtsying. He is all bitterness, intent on injecting every single one of his actions with it. He is all anger, Bofur's question pricking deeper underneath his skin than he wanted it to. _Running_. It's all he's ever known. Nori stares at this contradiction of a man, this Scotsman with the violence of ill-fitted dreams inked in every one of his home-done tattoos who thinks there is, somewhere in this gutter world, a smatter of _salvation_ for the willing, who thinks there's a _difference_ between them just because Dwalin picks and chooses which violences to accept. It isn't right, for all intents and purposes, by all _means_ , by trivialities and complex understandings of different facets of the truth-- it isn't _right_ to hate and want in the same breath. Still he does, because all the rules there are are the ones one makes for themselves.

“Let's get inside before Dunkelstimme wakes up and calls the cops, yes?” Nori says instead of anything else he could have snarled, the weight of the world placed in words on the tip of his tongue. Dwalin still hasn't stopped smirking. He wants to wring his fucking neck: after all, he's never been one for rational, logical hate. He's always liked the chaos and the blood and the screaming and the bones being broken. Makes for more interesting stories.

But it started simple, didn't it? It started with a grudge as small as a box wrapped in brown paper stuffed in a pocket, left there and ignored for a while only that it's constantly rubbing against your hand when you want to warm your fingers, so you _can't_ forget about it even if you'd want to, those petty little grudges that blossom because, say, someone shoots someone else in the back of the head one night in Tallinn when you were supposed to be the one to shoot them in the first place.

“Wait!”

Bofur scrambles backwards and then turns around. Dwalin and Nori stare at him, puzzled, as he crouches down and completely removes the begonias he had accidentally upturned when falling. He then gets to digging.

“Broadbeam, what the _Hell_ are you doing?” Nori asks, unimpressed.

“Taking precautions.” Bofur pants back, hands dirty with soil, as he removes great lumps of it, digging a hole deep enough to then be able to safely place his briefcase there.

“Listen, if we die, like you've been saying for the last bloody half hour, the next time Lucky here tends to his garden, he'll find it in no time.”

“But if we _don't_ , this way there's no risk of anyone else getting their hands on it. We're in, we're out, and my briefcase is nowhere near a dangerous situation.”

“That makes no sense.”

Dwalin claps both hands together, “We're fine, Rison, let Bofur do what he wants with his stuff. Now, shall we?”

Nori turns towards Dwalin. There's a pause.

“Sure. We're fine. Let's get this over with.”

Bofur finishes burying the briefcase and clumsily props the begonias back where they were. They flop to the side, but mostly seem to stand upright.

Dwalin slips the balaclava back down over his face. He screws a suppressor on top of both Grasper and Keeper and makes sure his brass knuckles are, just in case, easily accessible. Bofur does the same with his own gun. Nori opens his butterfly knife. He twirls it once.

“Now that we're all done showing off, who wants to check upstairs?” Dwalin whispers, when they're all ready.

“I'll go,” Bofur snaps, ready to get this all over with.

“Don't kill him right away if he's there. I wanna have a few words with him.” Nori says, as Bofur shoulders his way past him and Dwalin and quietly starts climbing up the stairs they found as soon as they walked through the backdoor, and Nori had nearly tripped in a pile of old phonebooks-- luckily he'd stopped himself before he'd cursed, sure thing, but still the quiet of the house had weighed a few hundred tons more in the immediate aftermath. Now Bofur's halfway up the stairs, and Nori's taken the kitchen as Dwalin checks the living room. Rison leans back against a wall and makes sure he can get a clear view if he peers in. He can, the digital clock on the stove ghastly telling him it's a quarter to five AM. Dwalin ducks around the corner and the living room, in the semi-darkness, seems empty enough. He slowly walks by what he assumes is a closet and peers over the couches for anyone hiding behind them. Nori quickly scuttles across the kitchen, past the perfectly clean kitchen top and the stove that looks like it hasn't been used in thirty years, to the fridge. He opens it with a gloved hand, more curious than anything. Dwalin peers at the collection of records sitting on the coffee table. Nothing too interesting: smooth jazz, some classical music.

Bofur reaches the top of the stairs. There's a bathroom to his right, a bedroom to his left. He creaks the bathroom door open and finds it empty. He takes a deep breath and stares at the bedroom door, slightly ajar. Either they're lucky, and Dunkelstimme is nowhere to be found, or they're _terribly_ unlucky, and not only will they have to find a way to deal with him being around, but they'll also possibly have to _kill him_ , which is, well, _a terrible idea--_ despite his need and wish to see him dead, it has recently dawned on him that if they _do_ kill the man, they'll just have killed one of The Eye's best agents.

Which is.

Not. Really an intelligent thing to do.

But hey. At this point, he might as well try and get things over with.

He creaks the door open very slowly, and takes a few tentative steps inside. The man in the bed, Werner Dunkelstimme, on-paper owner of Annatar Enterprises, de facto someone a bit more complicated than that, rolls out from under the blanket where he'd been waiting, grabs the gun under his pillow, and shoots Broadbeam in the left shoulder.

Nori looks up from the fridge and he narrows his eyes trying to discern if he's really just heard a gunshot. Then comes the sound of Broadbeam crashing down the stairs. Then comes someone trying to grab Nori's head from behind before he can turn around, and Nori has the presence and the alertness to sink his teeth into their wrist before they can. Dwalin puts down the record he was looking at when first he hears a shot, then a crash, then the sound of a struggle. As he moves to check the kitchen, the person hiding in the closet finally comes out and catches him almost by surprise (he's still able to parry their blow, although the knife slips and tears his coat sleeve), and if he wasn't in a bad mood before, now he most definitely _is_.

“Oh, _for fuck's sake_!” is a bark as he ducks the second blow, drops Grasper in favor of his knuckledusters, aims for the other's jaw. Bofur, on the other hand, is on the floor moaning. The person attacking Nori lets go with angry wail to cradle their bitten hand. Nori whirls around, knife gleaming in the fridge's neon lights, and gestures to the other to come forward: “C'mon, buddy.”

Dwalin, in the meantime, finds the side of his face smashed against the glass coffee table, shoulders first against its metal side. “ _Fuck_ ,” he snarls through a mouthful of blood, before someone, Nori's knife (and Nori, still attached to it) tangled in their shirt, crashes blindly into his attacker. It gives him enough time to scramble into standing and grab Grasper from off the coffee table where he'd left it, and stumble into the kitchen.

“The briefcase in the garden, grab the briefcase!” Bofur moans from under the Mouth, as he's trying to keep him off of himself with what little he can do with a wounded shoulder. Dwalin, still blinking away the ring in his ears, stares quizzically at Bofur for a few seconds, and then Nori calls from the living room, “Scotch! Little bit of help?” and he's snapped out of the sound in the back of his mouth, he's back at Nori's side.

“Scotch, _fuck_! Oh no, _no you don't_!” Bofur exclaims as Dunkelstimme above him lunges forward to reach the door, and grabs him by the hem of the shirt with his good hand, dragging him back down. Then he shifts his weight, tries to get Werner on his back, but Dunkelstimme manages to get a hand on his left shoulder and presses down. Bofur screams and lets go of him abruptly. Nori shoves one of the thugs off of himself, Dwalin leaps across the living room and kicks out, aims for the kneecaps. He hits home, and him and the other fall to the ground, and Dwalin's quick to crawl on top of him, try to immobilize his hands with his knees and manage to slam his head into the floor enough to break his nose. Nori turns his attention to the other one, nameless, faceless, wearing a black ski mask the same way they are, and all that'll ever be known about them becomes the blood on the blade of Rison's knife as he finishes the job he started, and finally manages to hit their hip and not their body armor like he did the first time. But then the other pries themselves out from under MacFundin's knees and grabs Dwalin's face, and claws at his cheek, and Dwalin isn't fast enough to stop them before they drag down and leave angry marks beneath his right eye. He blindly aims with his fist for their face, and when he misses he tries to find Keeper somewhere in his coat. He fires blindly, and the thug finally lets go of his face.

Then they hear Bofur screaming.

“Well, fuck.” Nori rushes back into the entryway via the kitchen. He sees The Mouth the moment he starts running for the door after having disabled Bofur, and puts two and two together: Nori rushes across the room, pounces over Bofur and crashes into The Mouth so that Werner's face makes an intimate encounter with the hard surface of his very own backdoor. Then Nori slams Werner's face against the jamb, and opens the door himself. Dwalin's quickly behind him, as Nori tears his way down the garden pathway and quickly climbs over the fence. Dwalin takes the time to stop, kick the begonias away for good, and grab the briefcase before following Nori. They rush down the street, and as Dwalin starts turning left, Nori bellows, “Disregard the _fucking_ car and let's get out of here!”

Dwalin slips and nearly loses his footing as he quickly backtracks, Bofur's briefcase safely in his arms, and then tries to catch up to Nori. Nori climbs over another fence and curses when as he lands, he loses his footing. Dwalin throws the briefcase over the fence, “Fucking _watch it_ , Scotch!” He climbs over too, and doesn't notice Nori beneath him before he lets himself go.

Nori kicks him off of him unceremoniously, and Dwalin quickly scrambles back, grabs the briefcase and stands upright.

“Fuck, sorry.”

“Yeah, you better be.” Nori stands up too, takes the balaclava off and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Dwalin pants and leans back against the wall. He finally takes his balaclava off, too.

Then he pauses, looks around, and looks back at Nori. Nori looks equally confused.

“...Where's Broadbeam?” they both ask at the same time.

“Fuck.” Dwalin then says.

“I thought he was with you.”

“I thought he was behind me.”

Nori tilts his head to the side, “Well then. Lucky's still alive, Broadbeam's with him, and we've fucked up.”

Dwalin pulls back in mock surprise. Nori rolls his eyes.

“MacFundin, don't start.”

“ _Fucked_? Blimey, are you _sure_? Entirely _certain_? But _how_ fucked? On a scale of, say, _zero_ to _The Eye has Silver Linings because Nori Rison couldn't accept he'd been fucking duped_ , how fucked do you think we are?”

Nori stares at Dwalin. He then moves a hand, very slowly, to reach into his jacket. It could be a number of things: a gun, his fist, a knife. It's simply a packet of cigarettes. He lights one. He blows smoke in Dwalin's face. He takes his time. Then he grabs Dwalin, and shoves him against the opposing wall, quicker than Dwalin would expect, leaving him with little time to react. His lit cigarette hovers over Dwalin's cheek, his teeth are bared in a snarl.

“Listen. _Lover_. All right, I made a mistake.

“Oi. Oi. Hey, if we want to get Broadbeam back--”

“ _Do we_ , though?”

“Cockney. Only a bastard would leave someone else in the hands of The Eye. Besides, don't you still wanna put a bullet in Lucky's head?”

“I've changed my mind. _Fuck_ Lucky.”

“How 'bout you move the cigarette outta my face, yeah? And then we talk.”

“Or I could shove this into your eye, and you could shut the fuck up for _good_. They don't have the briefcase, _we_ have the briefcase.”

“And you don't think Broadbeam's got half of it memorized?”

“He's MI6 trained, he'll do fine.”

Dwalin arches an eyebrow. It's _The Eye_ they're talking about-- not just some petty thugs.

“And what d'you suppose you'll do, when they've carved out of him he's with us? They know we have the briefcase. They'll come for us.”

“Oh, they probably already know. I'll change my name, lay low for a while. Not the first time I've done it. Won't be fucking last.”

Dwalin shakes his head, “Oh Jesus Christ-- friends, then? Past lovers? Family? What if they decide they're as _petty_ as you and want to get you where it hurts? Don't you have someone waiting for you at home while you're carving people's faces up?”

_Family_.

Nori's eyes gallop across Dwalin's face, he licks his lips quickly and swallows, the tip of his tongue darting in and out in a moment. He looks from the cigarette to Dwalin's cheek, and then steps back, puts it back in his mouth. Dwalin shoves him off the rest of the way.

“Good boy.”

“Yeah, I got someone. But they ain't waiting,” Nori scoffs and then mumbles: “Probably wouldn't shed that many tears they knew I were dead.”

Dwalin stares at him. This is the first time he's ever-- _ever_ heard something past Nori's lips that even resembled a smattering of personal information. Nori notices his expression and recoils.

“The Hell are you looking at? You thought people like me didn't get to have _a family_? _Jesus_.”

Dwalin snorts and walks away, “None of my business, Rison. We all got our ghosts,” he turns around and motions at Rison to follow him, “Now come on. We gotta let Beorn know just how much we fucked up.”

 

* * *

 

Beorn's idea of a good morning is many things: a sweet girl in her bed, the smell of freshly-brewed coffee, sunlight trickling in from an open window, a dog greeting you by licking your face, a good book read under the warmth of covers.

Being woken up at six AM by Dwalin MacFundin and Nori Rison banging loudly on her door, after she'd just dragged herself back to bed upon finding out that the Golden Trio was nowhere to be seen at their meeting spot, is most definitely _not_ part of that list.

She stares at the two, Dwalin's mouth still stained with blood and Nori's hair a disheveled semi-braided mess.

“Where's Broadbeam?” she asks, deadpan.

No answer comes from either of them.

“Oh fuck. You went there alone, didn't you?”

“Yes. Everyone wants to kill us now.” Nori announces back, his tone as deadpan as hers.

She eyes the briefcase Dwalin's holding, “No shit. You've got a goldmine there.” and then moves aside from the door, “Jesus, MacFundin. I can't believe you're not face-down in a ditch yet. You're an idiot.”

“So you've always told me.”

“Come on inside. Let's get you cleaned up and figure out what the Hell we're gonna do now.”

 


	11. ix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for a torture scene involving needles.

The first thing he wakes to is pain. It takes a moment, emerges from the back of his head, like emerging from water, like emerging from smoke, his bones and body condensing into an ache so deep he has to shake his head. Doing so sends a jolt of pain, even sharper, through his cheek, down his neck, into his shoulder-- for a moment, he reels. For a moment, his head spins. Then he remembers, blossoming like dead flowers rotting backwards: the gunshot, the fall down the stairs. (Then he has to close his eyes because he opened them slightly, and that hurt more than he ever thought it could).

Bofur Broadbeam curses softly under his breath. He then furrows his brow and tries to move: one piece at a time, Bofur lad, one piece at a time. First his left foot: it strains against ropes, the wood of the chair it's tied to pressing against the back of his calf. All right. Little chance for the other one to _not_ be tied down: it is. Of course. Right, then. He's sitting, and his legs are tied. No reason to believe his arms aren't tied, either: sure as day, he tries to move his hands (this sends a new crimson thunderbolt through his left shoulder and arm, and for a second he can only concentrate on breathing): both, tied to each other, behind what he assumes is the back of the chair he is sitting on. _To_ the back of the chair? It feels like it. He tries to tug at his bindings between clenched teeth.

Ah, fuck.

All right. Time to open his eyes. Now? _Not now_. Wait a moment.

For a second he swirls into nothing, black antimatter filling the space he assumes usually belongs to his body, a moment of unconsciousness he finds makes his tongue taste like copper. Then he trickles back into awareness, bit by bit, inch by inch, the weight of his arms and wounded shoulder and body emerging like a building you didn't notice you were driving against in the fog. There we go. Here he is. He's awake, he's conscious and he's in pain-- all three things he'd rather much _not_ be. At all.

 _Blimey, Linings, you've fallen real low_. He tastes the back of his throat with the tip of his tongue and it tastes vile. He grimaces.

Now'd be a good time to open his eyes.

He puts himself to task, then, with all the pallid enthusiasm he can muster in his swimming, tired brain: not much, if at all. He opens his eyes because he _has_ to, really, and because he has an inkling that he might as well decide when to be conscious and when not to be, because this may be the last time he is ever in control of what his body'll feel-- _that's torture for you_ , he figures, and considers putting a number of things into perspective (never find yourself on the other side of the knife, for starters. Much better to be the one _holding it_ ). But first things first: there's a whole world he has to see. Right eye first, left eye second, bit by bit by bit until he's fully there and aware of the daylight trickling in from the window near the ceiling, at the top of the wall-- a miraculous bit of sun on a British October morning.

He forces his head upright and sighs. The room is definitely _not_ Dunkelstimme's living room. It looks more like a basement. It's probably a basement. Ah, complications. He's never liked those, not at all (really, _who does_?). If this _isn't_ Dunkelstimme's house, then God only knows if Nori and Dwalin will be able to find him.

 _...If_ Nori and Dwalin decide to come, that is, which could entirely not be the case. Now then, if it were him, frankly, in their position, he'd have already sold the briefcase to the highest bidder and gone somewhere quiet to lay low until The Eye got their hands on it by other means, avoiding the mess altogether.

Just a different way of approaching problems, really.

Although the Bear might still be willing to help them, which might prove to be an advantage if they _were_ to come and try and get him back, but then there'd be other things to take into account, like if she knows exactly where he is, and how many people are waiting outside, and how protected this place actually i-- He hears it, behind him: someone shifting, the creak of a chair as someone he can't see stands now that it's clear he's awake.

All right. Thinking, later. Surviving, now.

He's not used to be the one being tied to a chair. Usually it's the other way around. Usually he takes _extra care_ in being the one doing the tying, and questioning, and torturing. Not today, it seems.

Bollocks.

Silver Linings inhales, exhales and then forces his aching, bruised face into a grin. Here we go. He's approximately got one shot at this, and he has to make it count. _Silvertongue_ , and all.

Lord, he is not a fan of this.

“Lucky, right? Can I call you Lucky? Or should we go with Werner? How about The Mouth? More formal? Too formal? I think I'll call you Lucky.”

The footsteps behind him pause. There is a soft sigh.

“No. No, Bofur. Although I don't doubt it would be better for you if I _were_ good old Werner. Unfortunately, I'm not, am I?”

A woman's voice. Bofur swallows and his grin falls effortlessly: it's easy to drop masks, given the right occasion. A woman's voice, and he's almost certain he knows who she is.

“Well,” and his voice shakes, _only once_ , and he's glad for that, “if you're not Lucky, then, what do I call you?”

The woman finally comes into view, black dress, red heels and leather gloves over her hands. She rests one of them, delicate and dangerous, on his wounded shoulder. She could squeeze. She does not.

Shelob crouches down in front of him and smiles, her tenderness a mockery of his bruised face. She tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. They took his newsboy cap, and put it God knows where. He notices the absence of its weight on his head with the same pang of anguish you notice the smallest of things when your world is wildly spinning out of control. The woman in front of him tuts.

“I think _Spider_ will do, sweet thing.”

And Bofur realizes, not without a hint of bitterness, that he is going to die on what's probably the last sunny day of the year.

* * *

 

Beorn finishes her coffee, gets up to refill her mug and is stopped short when the coffee pot is empty.

“Anyone want some more?”

“I'm fine, thank you,” Dwalin says, still holding his half-filled cup. He's still clutching the briefcase with his other hand. He should probably let go of it, he figures, and then does. Still, he keeps it between his legs and the couch he's sitting on: he's just become slightly overprotective of this thing, maybe solely because he suspects it holds a good amount of secrets, and maybe because he knows lots and lots of people would try and _kill him_ if they knew he had it.

“Tea, then?” she asks.

“Anything stronger than tea?” Nori chimes in. Beorn nods towards the liquor cabinet behind her, “Take your pick.”

Nori pours himself half a glass of whiskey and downs it in one go. Dwalin looks at him for a few seconds and then stands up and pries the bottle out of his hand. He pours himself a glass, too, and then takes a generous gulp. It certainly won't solve his problems, but it'll sure as Hell help _dampen_ them.

“Just so you know, you both owe me.” Beorn says, as she puts the coffee pot up on the stove and then sits back at the table. There's a pile of documents she hasn't really bothered going through, yet. She stares at the papers, rubs her face with her hand, and then looks at Nori and Dwalin, holding themselves like children that have been caught by the principal. She sighs.

“They won't keep him at Dunkelstimme's place.”

“I know.” Dwalin mutters.

“Can I just ask what the _Hell_ you were thinking? This is _The Eye_ \-- not some... ratty drug lord. This is-- Jesus. Can I just _ask why_?”

“Ask Rison, I'm sure he'll be more than happy to tell you.”

Nori sets his glass down, “You know the thing that really _gets me going_ , MacFundin? You could've said no, you could've opened your little, shitty Scottish mouth and said np, instead of blaming m--”

“Don't you _dare_ tell me what to do and not to do, you miserable _piece of sh—_ ”

“Hey. Both of you. Stop that!” Beorn says, and the two do. Nori scowls and fills his mug with coffee, Dwalin turns to listen to Beorn, “If we want to get Broadbeam _alive_ and with all his secrets, we can't bicker, and we have to move fast,” she continues, “Broadbeam probably knows shit about all of us. And we can't have The Eye know. Anything.”

When she tightens her jaw, Dwalin exhales.

“We all got our skeletons, MacFundin, and none of us want Sauron to know any of them.”

“Sauron's dead.”

“Then whatever's left of her organization. You know. The Mouth, the Witch King, probably... Spider.”

Her name from Beorn's lips like a prayer of wreckage. Dwalin sighs, audibly, and even Nori has to allow a flicker of worry across his face.

“ _Or Spider_.” Dwalin mutters.

“Thought she was dead, too,” Rison comments.

“Anyone can be dead to anyone at any time, you just gotta pay the right people,” Beorn off-handedly replies, “Jesus. You _really_ had to go there on your own, didn't you?”

“We've made some,” and Dwalin glances at Nori, “ _very_ poor decisions this morning.”

“Yeah. I can tell. Listen. I don't know much about what The Eye's been up to, recently. Or where they could've taken Broadbeam. Bastards are good at hiding, as one would expect. I need to check with my informers better.”

“Can't you do that from home?” Nori asks as she puts her coat on, kicks her slippers off and puts a pair of boots on.

“No. Can't do that from home.” is her deadpan reply.

“You said time was of the essence.”

“Rison, for _Christ's sake_. We're in this situation because of you. Shut your fucking face.” she snaps, whipping around to look him dead in the eye. Nori holds her gaze. She grabs her gun from the kitchen drawer and slips it into her holster, “All right? _Thank you_.”

Nori exhales, slowly, and crosses his arms.

 

* * *

 

Bofur closes his eyes, and inhales.

“No, no, don't close your eyes. Don't make me use the needle.”

He clings to these bitter last milliseconds of peace before he's dragged into time and space again to her fingers yanking his eyes open, nails digging through the plastic of her gloves into the skin beneath them, and his gaze being forced to meet hers.

“Never was a fan of A Clockwork Orange,” is Bofur's comment.

“I'm sure of it,” Spider replies. She smiles. Bofur grins back, sniffling. He can't feel his right hand, which he expected, and he's sure someone should change the gauze on his shoulder. He wouldn't dare ask her, though. God knows what she'd do to him.

“I have to admit, The Lady trained you _remarkably_ well. By now, most of you has sung to high heavens for me,” Shelob straightens herself back up, “begged for a bargain. Begged me for death.”

She tosses the rag she was holding aside and Bofur glances at it, dirty with his own blood.

“Come on, eyes on me. Eyes, on me.”

He obeys because he has little left to do, her finger slipped beneath his chin, his hair matted to his forehead. He swallows.

“Lions don't make bargains with men.”

“Oh, _Bofur_ , are you quoting the classics at me now?” she says, still smiling. She sighs, runs a hand along his cheek, and Bofur inhales very slowly when it lingers over his wounded shoulder. Her smile widens.

“You sure know how to make my stomach flutter,” and she presses down with her thumb into his wound and holds him down with her other hand when he starts thrashing, shushing him softly, “Now, how about you tell me everything you know about the Greenwood Server?”

 

* * *

 

Nori kicks his shoes off and lies down on the couch, cracks his back by stretching his arms beyond his head.

“I'm bored.”

“We've been here for less than an hour.” Dwalin says, tinkering with the briefcase. He's been trying to pry it open for the last ten minutes.

“Yeah well. Still bored. You know how I am, get bored easily.”

“Yeah, _I know how you are_.”

The couch creaks as Nori moves to lie on his side, hand propping his head up. Dwalin senses Nori staring at him from across the room, and sighs.

“Figure she has a bed?”

Dwalin puts down his lock pick, “ _Excuse me_?”

“I'm bored.”

“I'm not fucking you in someone else's bed.”

“What? You've fucked me in other people's beds plenty of times!”

Dwalin furrows his brow, “Name _once_.”

“Two months ago, when we did that hit on that Goldmünze representative. You know, when we got loopy on the adrenaline and all that shit.”

“He was _dead_. It's not like he was ever going to use the bed _again_.”

 

* * *

 

Beorn walks out of the messy, sweaty and chaotic subway station and lingers next to a payphone. She quickly enters it when she's sure she's not being watched, puts money in and then dials a number.

It rings, she waits. Someone finally picks up.

“Hello?”

“Esgaroth?” she asks.

There's a pause, and then: “Speaking.”

“It's Honey Badger. I'm at Tottenham Court, can we meet?”

Esgaroth sighs. She knows he's thinking.

“It's about Broadbeam.” she adds.

“Oh. _Fuck_. Sure, I'm on my way.”

She sees him come from the table she's having a drink at, hood pulled up and sunglasses covering his face. He notices her from across the street, looks the wrong way, waits for the light to change, hands buried in his pockets, and sits down at the table across from her. He takes off his sunglasses. He doesn't pull down his hood. He waits.

She eyes him as she pays for her check, as she smiles at the waitress, as she walks past him. A moment where she stops to light herself a cigarette long enough to make sure he's going to follow her. She ducks around a corner and walks into a Marks & Spencer. Last time she checked he was a few feet behind her. Esgaroth finds her in the menswear section, intently staring at a white dress shirt.

“The blue ones look better.” he says, nosing through the jackets hanging right next to them.

“Not a fan of that particular shade,” she comments, tutting, and then, “How much does Peredhel know?”

“Not much. How much do you know?”

“I know The Eye's got Broadbeam, but I need to know where they're keeping him.”

“Last I knew, Millennium Mills.”

“Thanks. Rison and MacFundin have decided they're going to save him. Or at least try.”

“Peredhel will want to arrest him. All three of them, for that matter.”

“And what do you want to do?”

“Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Alfrid hasn't gotten back to me yet.”

“Planning on letting Peredhel have them, then?”

“Probably.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.”

Beorn puts back the shirt she was holding up to herself. She thinks of Dwalin and the debt he owes her. She thinks of Dwalin and the bullet he nearly took for her.

“The CIA seriously doesn't want to take Broadbeam into custody?”

Esgaroth shakes his head, “Nope.”

“You're telling me the CIA doesn't want to take in the one person who can dish out more dirt on the British Secret Service than anyone else currently at large? You're telling me the CIA's gonna let the biggest source of blackmail we could ever get our hands on just rot away in a British maximum security prison? Bard. Come on.”

Robert “Esgaroth” Bard arches an eyebrow.

“Can you imagine the Master's face if we bring _Silver Linings_ in?” she continues, “Can you?”

Esgaorth's arched eyebrow peaks, then curves, then falls as his head dips into an admiring nod, “You know what? You're smart as Hell. Also terrifying. Blackmail _MI6_?”

Keep MacFundin out of prison, pay back her debt. Part of it. Most of it. As much as she feels like she has to.

She shrugs.

“Why the Hell not? Keep him alive until you get back to the States. Have the Master decide what to do with him. It's politics. It's survival.”

“Listen, if this is about keeping MacFundin out of prison to pay him back in the name of whatever bullet he took fo--”

“No, it's about seeing an opportunity and _taking it_. You don't survive three years undercover as a bounty hunter without learning a few tricks along the way, Esgaroth. Trust me on this. Let's bring Broadbeam in. Let's do this.”

Esgaorth sighs, “Sure.”

“Oh, and another thing-- do you still have access to the Laketown basement?”

“How much do you need?”

“Just for the three of us. Thank you, Bard,” she winks at him and leaves a small kiss on his cheek before leaving, “You should buy the jacket,” she calls behind herself, “It suits you!”

 

* * *

 

“I am getting very _very_ tired.”

Spider glances at Broadbeam as she wipes off her ice pick in quick, skittish movements. Her voice comes trickling through the throbbing nightmare in his wrists and hands. Bofur's eyes flicker shut. They flicker open again right afterwards, the darkness beneath them little better than the emptiness in front of him and the poison of her voice.

“Apologies, ma'm. I guess I'm hardier than you expected.”

“You're a downright bastard, that's what you are. They knew who they were training. Bravo.”

She stops her pacing to stand in front of him, arms crossed. Thinking.

“You could make this so much simpler for yourself, and yet you're not. Not out of loyalty to The Lady, God forbid. I think you're well past that.”

Bofur sniffles and grins, spits the blood pooled in his mouth, an affront to her as much as it is him trying to rid himself of the taste of death, “Personal integrity.”

“Ah. Of course. How silly of me.”

 

* * *

 

Elrond looks up when he hears a knock on his door.

“Come in.”

Esgaroth's head peeks in.

“Hello.”

“Hello, CIA.”

“I have a lead, on the Trio case, if you're interested.”

“I'm all ears. Are they all dead yet?”

Esgaroth pushes himself in all the way. The door clicks shut behind him.

“Well, first off-- The Eye has Broadbeam.”

He watches as Elrond quickly flails to a standing position, knocking his empty mug over and grabbing his coat from off the coat rack.

“Sorry. All I heard was _Sauron has Silver Linings_. Does Spider have him?”

“Probably.”

“Shit. Keep on talking, I'm getting Greenleaf.”

Esgaroth follows Elrond as he walks up to Thranduil's desk and gestures at him to come with, “What's going on?” Thranduil asks.

“The Eye has Broadbeam, Esgaroth can fill you in while we're going there,” Elrond stops to finish putting his coat on, “-- _Where are we going_?”

“Millennium Mills,” Esgaroth answers, making room for Thranduil in the elevator.

“Another thing--”

“I'm all ears, CIA.”

“My informer also let me know Rison and MacFundin'll be there. They're trying to get their buddy back.”

“Lovely. Two birds with one stone.”

Esgaroth grins at Elrond nervously as the elevator reaches the ground floor, “Yeah. _Ain't that great_.”

 

* * *

 

“How about that one time in Munich?”

“When?”

“When we were cleaning the blood up after Broadbeam got to the ambassador, and you fucked me up against the wall?”

“That wasn't in his bed.”

“In his house, though.”

“Not the same thing!”

“All right, the blowjob in the confessional.”

“A confessional isn't a _bed_.”

“Yes, but the Lord is ever-watching.”

“You're not even religious.”

Nori wags his finger at him, “ _How do you know_? How about that time in the bathtub, when you--”

“Please don't have this conversation in my living room.”

Beorn closes the door with her foot and drops a gym bag on the table in front of Dwalin, on top of the briefcase.

“What's this?” MacFundin asks.

“Supplies, courtesy of an anonymous benefactor.”

Dwalin stands up and starts nosing through it.

“Oh. _Nice_.”

Ammo, two AK-102's, a good deal of hand grenades. He twirls a box of .45 bullets and reads the label on the back.

“I'm gonna assume you got a lead?”

“Well, according to my informer, they're keeping your friend at the Millennium Mills.”

Dwalin nods and opens his wallet. He hands her four fifty pound bills and she tucks them in her back pants pocket. She says: “Lovely doing business with you.” with an edge that's all playful sarcasm.

“You think Broadbeam's still alive?” Nori asks, making his way from off the couch to the table to see for himself what's inside the bag.

“If Spider hasn't had her way with him, yes. If not, no.” she says, loading up her gun.

Dwalin shrugs, “Worth a try.”

 

* * *

 

Thranduil jogs up and down next to Elrond as Esgaroth grabs his rifle out of his hotel room.

“You sure we should be doing this alone? It's The Eye after all.”

“Don't have time for much else, Greenleaf.”

“Couldn't we ask for, you know, reinforcements?”

Elrond glances at Thranduil and then goes back to staring into space, scoffing slightly, “Can't risk G knowing what we're doing.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn't want me arresting Broadbeam. Says it'll... complicate things. Bring forth unnecessary issues that are better left avoided.”

“Broadbeam's MI6 though. We should at least notify them we're doing this.”

Esgaroth joins them again. Elrond turns towards Thranduil, “No. No, Greenleaf. I think we'll be fine.”

 

* * *

 

The Royal Victoria dock seems unnatural, bathed in sunlight. Usually the sky's as grey as the river that sluggishly drags itself along underneath it, but today the sun's out, the clouds are timid and quiet, and it is all quite terribly _bright_.

Doesn't feel like London at all.

Nori Rison's the last of the three to climb over the fence. He's done a lot of that, climbing, over the past twenty four hours, and isn't exactly happy at the idea of having to do it again, _especially_ in broad daylight. But, after all, the times are desperate, and they're all caught in quite the goddamn mess.

“Couldn't have cut the bolt?” he snaps, wiping his pants off.

“Don't have the tools, Rison.”

“Could've picked the lock.”

“Well, we're all inside, and that's what matters.”

“I'd like to see you try and haul Broadbeam over that fence. He won't be in top shape, you know. Or even alive, maybe,” he avoids a pile of debris with a sneer.

“Well, maybe it's not Spider,” Beorn says, half-joking, half-somewhat hopeful (she'd never wish that fate on anyone, friend, acquaintance or enemy), “maybe it's just the Mouth.”

“I didn't think the Mouth tortured.” Dwalin comments. They've reached one of the back doors of the old flour mill. A seagull aimlessly chatters over their heads as it perches on the windowsill above them. Dwalin frowns at it, almost daring it to poop on them.

It doesn't.

“Bit too quiet for my tastes,” Nori says.

“It's a large building,” Dwalin replies as he sets down to picking the lock, “they might be looking towards the water.”

“Or they might've just let her do her job on her own. God, this is shit. This is shit,” Beorn mutters, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, “Jesus.”

“Aren't you going to yell at me?” Nori asks, half expecting she will.

“No, MacFundin's done enough of that already.”

The lock snaps open, Dwalin stands, “It's true, I have.”

Nori smirks and cocks his gun, as Beorn starts opening the door.

“Well boys, ready to kick The Eye's ass?” she asks.

Dwalin pulls out both Grasper and Keeper, “Not really, no. But hey. Maybe we'll even live to tell the tale. What the _hell_ are those?”

Beorn grins at him as she finishes slipping the gloves on: a back panel covering the back of her hands, a leather cuff around her wrists and at the bottom of each finger, the top of her fingers covered in jointed leather strips that end in claws, sharp, made of metal.

“Holy fuck,” Nori says, as if the world suddenly made sense, “The Bear. _The Goddamn Bear_.”

Beorn clenches her fists.

“Can you shoot with those on?” Dwalin whispers as they start making their way up the stairs. It _is_ quiet. Jesus. Too quiet, Rison's right.

“Made 'em on purpose. Don't block my knuckles, can shoot if I have to.”

“ _I want them_.” Nori excitedly says. Dwalin glares at him, “You already have your knives, Rison. You don't need claws.”

“But I _want them_.”

“Rison.”

Nori frowns at Dwalin, and absent-mindedly mumbles to himself something about MacFundin being “no fun”.

 

* * *

 

Bofur catches his breath and it rattles through his chest like footsteps on an old wooden floor. He finds every inch of it in the canvas of his aching neck and mangled hand, the pain in his mouth, his shoulder that's raging across the upper part of his back. He can only sit straight, eyes set ahead to the woman who is sitting in front of him, filling a syringe with transparent liquid from a small glass bottle. He whines quietly.

He knows what this is.

Shelob lowers the syringe and sighs.

“Bofur. _Bofur_. I really hate that it's come to this. You have more potential than you think. Had you been smart, you could've done so, _so_ well.”

She holds up the syringe. The liquid inside reflects the light coming in from the window.

“Do you know what this is?”

Bofur inhales, Bofur exhales. He clears his throat: “A small dose of succinylchodine mixed with ketamine hydrochloride. It will paralyze me and confuse me, given in small amounts. If you give me more, it will kill me. I assume the dosage will depend on what you want to do with me. Either way, it is known as the Spider's Bite.”

“ _Very good_ , you've done your homework. And do you know what it means?”

“It means my time is running up.”

She walks up to him, unties the hand whose fingers she broke and extends his arm in front of him. Bofur flinches and despite it all feels his heart throw itself against his ribcage like an animal begging to be freed-- because it knows what's about to happen-- his brain told it, his mind let it know, and now this notion is sitting, fair and square, right in front of his eyes, and his heart is unable to accept it.

What's about to happen is Bofur Broadbeam is going to die because all his muscles including his diaphragm will stop working, and he didn't even have time to tell his brother and cousin that he's sorry. He closes his eyes when she beats on his arm, lightly, to get the vein to show.

And then The Mouth peeks in.

“Excuse me, Shelob? We may have a problem.”

Bofur feels her grip on his arm slack and the breath he just realizes he was holding softly escape from his nose. He cracks a single eye open, she's standing and her back is turned.

“What's going on?”

“Movement downstairs, third and fourth quadrant. Looks like MacFundin, Rison and-- I think the _Bear_?”

Bofur's ears perk up. He curses that she untied his broken hand (of course she'd untie that one), but he keeps his eyes lidded in case she turns around again, and listens. What he hears is the Spider tutting. He absent-mindedly tugs at the other hand.

And then the knot comes loose. Bofur freezes. God exists after all, it seems.

“Oh, for the _love of_ \--” Shelob mutters, and then finds Bofur Broadbeam's full-body weight colliding with the small of her back. Dunkelstimme moves out of the way, out of surprise more than anything else, when she wobbles forward and Bofur wobbles with her, ignoring every inch of his body that's begging for him _not_ to do this.

He does it, mostly because he's desperate. The two of them sprawl to the floor and the syringe rolls out of her grip. She hisses and lurches forward, and Bofur lurches forward too and manages to grab it a second before she does, slip, and nearly land face-first on the floor. The Mouth tries to catch him but he manages to propel himself down the stairs, half-running, half-falling.

Nori freezes when he hears something crash, and the others do too. Then they see him, slipping down three steps and trying to hold himself with his mangled hand, the syringe slipping out of his grasp as he stumbles forward to catch it. It rolls to the ground before he does.

“... _Broadbeam_?” Dwalin asks, the man in a pile at his feet.

Bofur moans in response, trying to drag himself up. Dwalin grabs him by the arm (he yelps) and helps him stand, looping his arm around his shoulders. Nori looks up at the flight of stairs he just fell off of, and sees both Shelob and Werner turning a corner.

“Broadbeam, we can save the tearful reunion for later. We gotta get the fuck out of here now. _Now_.”

Shelob angrily snarls something in a walkie talkie. Soon enough, three men emerge from the empty, derelict room in front of them, and two more flank The Mouth and the Spider at the top of the stairs.

“Well. Fuck.”

“Hands up! Don't move.”

Dwalin and Beorn exchange a glance-- that sounded, _honest to God_ , just like Elrond Peredhel. They turn: there he is, aiming a gun at them, with a kid, probably no older than twenty-three, to his right, raising his taser.

“Fuck no.” Bofur mumbles, his legs hardly collaborating as he tries to stand up. Beorn stares at Peredhel for an instant before she has to duck a bullet Shelob's just shot, and then she jumps forward towards the closest of the goons (how many faceless masked men has she had to kill to save her own skin?) and buries her claws in his shoulder with a roar. He screams. She yanks him close to her, turns him around, claws still firmly planted in his flesh, and then throws him at his nearest accomplice, turns around and lashes out at the one that's just come down the stairs. Nori watches as he lurches forward, his face a bloody mess, and then slams into him, throws him against the wall, cuts him ear to ear with a grin.

“ _Get Broadbeam_!” Werner yells, making his way down the stairs too, and shoots at Elrond. Elrond ducks behind the empty doorway (the door's long gone) him and Thranduil came in through, and fires at Dunkelstimme blindly. He misses.

“Shit,” he mumbles underneath his breath, and then, into an earpiece, “Esgaroth, do you have a clean shot?”

From the rafters above them, Esgaroth grimaces, “No, Peredhel, nothing yet.”

“If you can, hit Örümcek, but don't kill her. The Lady wants her alive. Try to get Dunkelstimme too.”

“I can try.”

Dwalin curses Bofur's dead weight as Broadbeam clings to his shirt. He glances at the man, who looks like he's had _a number_ of days better than this one.

“Broadbeam, can you stand on your own?”

“Doubtful.”

“Fuck.”

“ _Listen_ , I haven't really had an easy morning.”

“Yeah, I know. Still,” Dwalin dodges a blow and Bofur hisses in pain, “I'm trying to keep the both of us alive,” he makes sure to have the open doorway Elrond's behind well in his line of vision-- not an entirely easy task, caught as they are in the crossfire. Beorn's elbow collides with one of the attacker's sternum, then she turns and claws at his chest. Dwalin has to pause, for a second, and stare mesmerized at her handiwork: she moves with calculated fluidity and painstaking ferocity, clawing from the bottom towards the top, using the momentum of her body as it twists mid-turn to cut as deep as she can go, leaving angry, deadly gashes-- like the bear she carries the name of. The man behind her falls dead, a bullet wound between the eyes. She stops to catch her breath, on her knees, her fists clenched, and nods towards the rafters. In the frenzy, no one will notice he helped. In the frenzy she is, for a moment of respite, immensely grateful. Then she grabs her gun out of her holster and shoots at the man running towards her, still crouched. Dukelstimme, in the meantime, is currently becoming very familiar with Nori Rison. The man manages to parry most of Nori's attacks, the redhead throwing himself at him with both knives, one aiming for his throat, the other for his side. He manages to grab Nori's wrist, and the two exchange a glance: Nori's eyes widen, Dunkelstimme's lips quirk into a smirk, and then he twists his arm and Nori lets go of his knife with a snarl.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Elrond snaps, and shoots in Dunkelstimme's direction. He manages to graze him: not enough to hurt him, but enough to have him let go of Nori.

“Did you just... save Nori Rison's life?” Thranduil asks, staring at Elrond from across the doorway.

“I think so?” Elrond replies, “Fuck. We gotta find a way to get in there. Or out of here. Esgaroth, any clear shots?”

“If by _clear shots_ you mean I can't tell where one person begins or the other ends, sure. I got _plenty of those_.”

The Mouth keens, holding his bleeding arm.

And then Shelob enters the fray.

She heads straight for Bofur and, by proxy, Dwalin, and Dwalin sees her walking towards him like an oncoming storm. He shoves Bofur behind him, Bofur leaning against his knees, Bofur who sees his chance and scrambles towards an upturned rotting table. Shelob glances at him and tries to bypass Dwalin and reach him, but Dwalin quickly tries to hit her with the butt of his gun, she dodges the blow and kicks back, hard, shoes connecting with his kneecap, and he curses, leaning over. She hits his face with her knee before he can stand straight again, and Dwalin's on the floor. Not a good place to be, in a fight against Spider.

“Oh, it always has to be the pretty ones,” she comments as she cocks her gun and points it at Dwalin's head. Dwalin, dazed, stares down the barrel. He manages to whine.

Then Nori throws himself at Shelob, and she hits the table Bofur's hiding behind, and Bofur, in the daze of the sound of his pulse filling his ears, hits Shelob in the back of the head with a stray piece of plaster. It is over in a moment. She collapses.

Bofur stares at her still form, then at Nori, who's helping Dwalin stand. Elrond sees the moment of calm and stands up, ready to arrest them. Beorn sees him out of the corner of her eye and, dodging a blow from one of the last henchmen still conscious or alive, burying her claws in his face, she opens a door on the opposite side, “Dwalin! Rison! Linings! This way!”

Esgaroth lowers his rifle and furrows his brow, “What the _hell_ are you doing, Bry?” he mutters under his breath, as Thranduil dashes for the door Nori, Dwalin and Bofur have just disappeared behind, catapulting themselves down the fire escape.

“Leave them!” Elrond calls out behind him. Greenleaf stops, “Focus on Dunkelstimme!”

Thranduil nods to himself and obeys, points his gun at The Mouth, crumpled in a corner with a bleeding arm. Elrond hovers next to an unconscious Spider.

Esgaroth changes the channel on his earpiece, “Bryanna, what the _Hell_ are you doing?” he mutters as he climbs down the rafters.

“Detour. Change of plans.”

“ _Fuck_. You never wanted us to have Broadbeam, did you?”

She stops in her tracks. They keep on going-- Dwalin gives her a lingering glance, Bofur clinging to him, but that's all he has time for. They're gone, out the door, and she's standing at the top of the last flight of stairs.

“I do. Just not with MacFundin and Rison watching.”

“ _This is about_ \--”

“No! Fuck! Bard, I'm undercover! If they know I'm CIA-- Christ. _I gotta survive somehow_!”

There is a crackling pause. For a moment she thinks the communication's dropped. Then he mutters,

“They're gone, we'll never be able to find them for God knows how long.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I fucked up.”

Esgaroth rubs his face with his hand, “Yeah, well. You're not the only person who fucked up today.”

 

* * *

 

On her knees, her gaze dark and daggers and cruelty, Shelob scowls at Elrond who scowls right back. He eyes the tattoo of an eye on her wrist as he handcuffs her to the metal tubing right next to The Mouth, and waits for Thranduil as he finishes making the call at the payphone across the street.

He doesn't budge. Neither does Shelob. There's some part of him, the quiet, rational one, that tells him that he's done something very, very good today. And then there's the terrified, exhausted one, the one that's waiting for Elros to die and waiting for Celebrian to leave him, and that one's saying it isn't over. No matter how much he wants it to be over.

She doesn't say a word as he sits down across from her, waiting. Behind him, Esgaroth's inspecting the bodies they all left behind.

“You think you are free? You think you are safe?”

Elrond swallows and ignores Shelob, at first. But then he notices Werner is smiling as she speaks, and clenches his jaw.

“Sauron is dead.”

Shelob tilts her head to the side, eyes narrowed, “How can she be dead, when she is poison and smoke and ruin?”

“Well, she's also flesh and blood. And flesh and blood can be killed. And she was.”

The Spider's lips curl into a smirk as she leans her head back against the wall. She does not laugh. She does not grant Elrond the satisfaction of hearing her laugh.

“There is no safety. There never will be. Your world will burn.”

“Elrond?” Thranduil peers back into the room, “The agents are here to clean up,” he awkwardly glances towards the pair handcuffed to the wall, “and there's a woman who wants to see you. Says she's government.”

“Did she give you her name?” Elrond asks, standing up.

“Uh. No. She's downstairs.”

Elrond nods towards the two, “Keep an eye on them, will you. At least until I come back.”

Thranduil nods, “Will do.”

Elrond Peredhel straightens his shirt up, pushes back his hair, and readies himself to meet with his mother-in-law.

 

* * *

 

Bofur slides to the floor of the elevator of the motel they're renting rooms in. He buries his face in his healthy hand and whines softly. Nori and Dwalin are both leaning back. Nori closes his eyes. Dwalin tries to catch his breath.

The elevator dings when it reaches their floor. Both Nori and Dwalin help Bofur stand and gingerly accompany him to his room. Dwalin dresses his wounds, cleans the hole in his shoulder, splints the worst of the broken fingers, and makes sure he hasn't a concussion. Nori puts his briefcase on the desk (he shows it to Bofur beforehand, reassuring him nobody went through it).

They close the door behind themselves, leaving Broadbeam lying in bed, teetering between sleep and consciousness.

Dwalin sighs.

“Well. That's. Sure been a morning.” he says, stretching his back. His forehead aches where Shelob's knee hit it. Nori nods and doesn't verbalise an answer.

They exchange glances and then Dwalin clears his throat. He stares at twitchy, fucked up Nori, and tilts his head. He feels tired, deep-rooted, difficulty-sated. He feels tired and dead and empty, and needs something to annul himself inside of.

“You still up for that fuck?”

Nori's face brightens up, and he _grins_.

“Thought you'd never ask.”

 


	12. x

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for violence and heavy religious imagery.

He's alive enough to be awake, which is all in all a better thing than being, well, _dead_ , and he's alive enough to know he knows a painkiller. Two mildly positive things as opposed to one _very_ negative thing: overall he could be fairing much worse. He could be dead.

He's in a bed, yes? Not a very soft bed, but it's definitely not a chair that he's tied to. It's a bed. With a mattress, even, with all its horrible low quality springs and every inch of delightful parasites infesting it. There's even a pillow behind his head. Oh, this is splendid. _Infinitely_ better than how he felt-- shit, when?

He turns his head to the side to check the clock on the bedside table. Something something AM. He's not very good at reading anything right now, his head is spinning, his eyesight's swimming. He is, however, awake enough to notice the bottle of whisky someone left on his nightstand. He reaches over for it. There's a note, scrawled on the back of a Tesco's receipt hastily taped to the bottle: _“for the ache. thought of getting you painkillers, figured you'd appreciate this more. sorry you almost died – N._ ” Coincidentally, right about then Bofur becomes _very_ aware of the pain radiating from his broken hand: a dull, terrible throb that sinks through every inch of his flesh and reminds his brain that yes, all of that happened and yes, he did hit the Spider on the back of the head with a piece of plaster when she--

Bofur shoots up in his bed and flinches when his broken hand protests, loudly, and so does every other inch of his beaten and relatively battered body. He scans the room frantically in the semi-darkness and then catches a glimpse of his briefcase on the motel room desk. He collapses back down on the bed, sighing in relief. All is well.

Then the thumping starts.

Muffled and far away, coming from the wall opposite his bed. He remembers, vaguely, from a decade before that spanned the day earlier, Rison getting the motel room right next to his. Rison. Right. Thumping. That too. Then comes the moaning, two voices, lewd and increasingly labored.

Bofur's eyes snap open.

 

* * *

 

“ _Tell me_ you have something on the Trio.” Elrond says, as Beorn briskly walks into the break room. Elrond's sitting at a table, coffee cup next to him. Thranduil's fiddling with a button on his sleeve. Esgaroth's sitting with his feet on the table. Beorn glances at him and then nods at Elrond, “I do.”

“Oh, _thank God_.”

“Managed to track down a hotel they might be staying at. Shitty place, but I guess the lower they fly, the safer they are.”

Thranduil grabs his coat, “All right, let's go,” quickly followed by Elrond. Beorn places a hand on Esgaroth's shoulder and stops him before he can join the other two.

“The address' 35 Shepherds Bush Road. Sapphire Hotel. Bard, I can't come with you.”

He arches an eyebrow.

“Beorn, you've been undercover enough. Whatever loyalties--”

She shakes her head, “I've got a new lead.”

“What? About who?”

“Smaug Goldmünze.”

She lowers her voice like she's telling a secret.

“Oh. _Fuck_.”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Couple of months. I think The Eye's planning something big with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Afghanistan, that's all I know.”

“ _Afghanistan_?”

“Yeah, but it could take _years_ , you know how their sleeper cells works.”

“Shit.”

“CIA, you coming?”

Esgaroth glances up and waves at Elrond, “Be there in a minute, Peredhel,” and then, looking back at Beorn, “I'll call you. Keep me posted,” he calls behind his shoulder as he jogs to catch the elevator before it closes.

 

* * *

 

Bofur frowns at the wall, sitting at the end of his bed. The moaning continues, louder, as if they were fucking right up against the wall. He closes an eye trying to determine where the sound is coming from exactly, and points his gun at the spot on the plaster he hopes corresponds to it.

Dwalin, still catching his breath, watches Nori's freckled, scratched back as the redhead reaches down and picks up Dwalin's flannel shirt from off the floor to slip on, as if they're lovers, as if Nori's ever even remotely desired to have his scent cling to his shoulders. The fucks are politics, if one wants to be precise. The fucks are balance-makers. The fucks are there so they know they won't try and kill each other, so they can taste each other's blood in different ways. Nori, hair swept over to the side, falling over his neck, starts buttoning Dwalin's shirt and then, once he's done, stretches, the fabric barely covering him past his waistline. He throws a pair of pants on, too.

Dwalin stands up from the bed they collapsed onto, panting and glistening, and the bedsprings creak as his weight shifts. Nori glances behind his shoulder and smirks at MacFundin as he's putting on a pair of pants.

“'Scuse me, lover.” he says before sauntering across the room and opening the door.

Bofur jumps when Nori throws his room door open. He hastily lowers the gun and hides it behind his back.

“I wasn't actually going to shoot.”

Nori ignores him and walks up to him, perfectly quiet. He's smiling.

He slaps Bofur across face with the back of his hand. Bofur blinks and then cups his now even more aching cheek.

“What the _fuck_ was that about?”

“ _Spider_? _**Really**_?”

Bofur blinks and then sighs, “I _did_ warn you, you know.”

“Bit of a difference between a random _hello lads, let's not do this, it's a bad idea_ , and letting us know Lucky was in cahoots with _Spider_.”

“He has a point,” Dwalin pokes his head in the room as he stuffs Grasper and Keeper in the waistband of his jeans, still shirtless.

“Shut up, MacFundin,” the other two both snap.

The elevator doors at the other end of the hall behind them ding open. Elrond Peredhel, having just thanked the very kind man at the reception, is finishing rolling up his sleeves and struggling with the button when Thranduil Greenleaf literally _buries_ his nails in his shoulder. Elrond looks up to snap at him, and then his expression falls. He glances at Esgaroth, who's already pulling out his gun, and places a finger to his lips. The elevator doors start closing and he hastily throws an arm between them before they can completely: they freeze and then recoil, whizzing as they go. Elrond straightens his shirt out and then pulls out his own gun from the holster. He nudges at the other two to follow him, in silence, and he hopes the floorboards won't creak _too much_ , all loose screws and bad quality wood.

He clears his throat, “Don't move. You're under arrest.”

Nori's shoulders freeze and Bofur makes a face. Dwalin stops, for a second, and him and Bofur share a look from the doorway to the bed. Bofur grabs the glance and passes it onto Nori. Nori dips his head in acknowledgement so subtly Bofur nearly doesn't notice, either, and then Bofur glances back at MacFundin. MacFundin, shirtless, sighs, and turns around.

“Seriously, mate? I'm not even wearing a _shirt_.”

Elrond appeals to every inch of self-control not to glance at Dwalin's abs (because, of course, that's the first impulse _anyone_ gets when a comment's made about any lack of garments-- just look at the offended, or offending, area, and make a downright proper gaping arse of yourself) and arches an eyebrow, “Tough luck. _Mate_.”

And then Bofur pulls the gun out from behind his back, and Nori jumps to the side, and Dwalin dives for the room to grab at least his knuckledusters. Nori drops and rolls, and Thranduil shoves Esgaroth out of the way of Bofur's bullet. It grazes the American's shoulder and lodges in the wall. Of course where there's a gunshot there'll be a crowd, and Elrond quickly pulls out his badge-- “Metropolitan police here, nothing to worry about, just a routine drug bust.”

“ _Routine drug bust_?” a woman Elrond's going to assume is the manager exclaims, sounding either genuinely exaggeratedly scandalized, or mockingly moderately outraged. Either way, Peredhel manages to frown, and then Bofur's second gunshot goes off. The bullet luckily avoids hitting anyone, and instead lodges in the ceiling. Several people yelp.

“ _I advise you evacuate your guests_ , ma'm.” Elrond snarls, unconsciously waving his badge at her, “Now. Please.”

She nods and backs up, opening the emergency exit.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Esgaroth yelps, back against the wall. “You fucking bast--”

“This is why you never go _anywhere without weapons_ , Rison,” Nori snarls at himself as he takes cover underneath the shitty desk the briefcase's safely stored on top of.

“Rison!” Bofur barks out, kicking the knife strapped under his bed in Nori's direction. Nori grabs it, and winks before standing. He throws himself at Elrond, who narrowly jumps back and avoids the lunge aimed for his stomach. He collides with Dwalin's side, and Dwalin quickly pushes him back. Thranduil makes sure Esgaroth's fine and then aims his taser at Dwalin-- only to find Dwalin colliding with his chest, coming in from his somewhat blind side, and sending the two of them sprawling. Bofur's grabbed his briefcase, Nori's focusing his attention on Elrond and Esgaroth, recovered from the momentary shock, is aiming directly for Bofur.

“Come here, you fucking bastard.”

“Agent Bard! What a pleasure to see you again, I had no idea you were on this side of the Atlantic! You shouldn't be fighting, you're wounded.”

“Oh, shut the _fuck_ up.” Esgaroth barks.

Elrond has to deal, for a few dazed moments, with automatically parrying Nori's blows. He aims with a foot for Rison's knees, and hits home, sends him to the floor. Esgaroth's discarded his gun and is aiming with his fist for Bofur's head. Bofur deliberately ignores the whine of his wounded shoulder and the scream of his broken hand and rolls off the bed to avoid the blow, dropping to the floor. He groans.

“I've waited six months for this.” Esgaroth snarls, regaining his balance after his failed punch. He flinches when his grazed arm protests loudly up into his neck.

“Can't blame you, Uncle Sam, lots of people seem to want to kill me.”

Thranduil manages to slam both hands on Dwalin's face and then slide one down to his neck, trying to push him off of him. He attempts to gain enough space to kick him in the stomach, but Dwalin manages to knock his knee away with his own, and Thranduil reverts to trying to grab his taser from where it's fallen next to him, knocked out of his hand when Dwalin'd collided with him. With his other hand, he keeps busy, still attempting to crush Dwalin's windpipe.

Esgaroth growls and Bofur drags himself to his feet by grabbing onto the sheets before he can land a blow on him, deciding to aim for the side of the American's head with the butt of his gun. He loses his balance, still dizzy from the blood loss, and Esgaroth sees his chance to try and immobilize him and handcuff him. Nori aims for Elrond's kneecaps and, in avoiding the blade, Elrond trips and falls back. He lands on the floor, and Nori sees, out of the corner of his eye, Bard making a pass for Bofur's wrists.

“ _Fuck_.” he mumbles, and, before Elrond can stand up, Rison's running and wrapping his legs around Esgaroth's waist. Esgaroth curses and manages to fall forward, thrown off-balance by the suddenness of Nori grabbing him. Bofur climbs back onto the bed, clumsily, painfully, and, as Esgaroth lands flat on his face, he crosses the room and grabs his briefcase. Limping down the hall, followed by Rison, he uses his briefcase to hit Thranduil on the leg peeking out from underneath Dwalin's body, right above the knee and, pained, Greenleaf lets go of Dwalin's throat, gives Dwalin the perfect chance to stand, as Nori and Bofur make for the elevator. Before joining them, he hesitates for an instant-- then he shrugs, hops over Thranduil, quickly grabs a shirt from out his room and runs like hell before either Elrond, Thranduil or Bard can stand back up. Behind him, Elrond stumbles, yells loudly, “Stop them! _For the love of God_ , stop them!” but it's too late, the door slams behind him and drowns out the police officer's voice, he's running for the lobby, he's gone.

 

* * *

 

“Who _the fuck_ told Peredhel where the _Hell we were_?”

Nori roars and grabs the chair he was just sitting on and shoves it across the concrete floor. It screeches along the floor of the basement they're hiding in, since Beorn was nowhere to be found, and, for a moment, teeters like a drunk equilibrist on only one leg. Then it crashes to the floor, and Dwalin flinches.

“Maybe it _was_ a routine drugs bust, and we just happened to get caught in the middle.” he interjects, arms crossed. He's back at playing rational, he's back at playing the rocks against which the waves can break without hurting anyone. It is a side effect of playing with fire. It is a side effect of upsetting Nori Rison. It is a side effect of choosing blades over calm, choosing lust over sanity, perdition for a moment over the awareness of being what he is, because Lord he has _sinned_ , and he doesn't know if there's any way to rinse the dirt from underneath his nails. So he indulges to erase things he doesn't want to think about.

But he's indulged enough.

Nori stares at the angry white marks the chair left on the floor, the fine grating dust of the man-made bones of a building. Bofur sighs, he lets his head fall back, feels the back of his head scrape against the wall where he's leaning. He clears his throat. Nori's eyes scan the wall, crawl up to the ceiling, sweep downwards again, stop in the middle of the floor. He lingers, for a moment, like the breath before a plunge, so utterly intoxicating, so utterly damned.

Then he says, “We should teach 'em a lesson.”

“ _What_?”

“We should retaliate. Teach Peredhel a lesson.”

“ _No one_ is teaching Peredhel a lesson.”

“Why not, Scotch? If we don't he'll come again, and again, and _again_ \-- Jesus if I find who gave him our location I'll--”

“Then we disappear. Lay low for a while.”

“With our names in _the system_? Because believe me, he's got our prints all lined up-”

Bofur clears his throat and shifts, eyes still closed, and squeezes the handle of the briefcase slightly tighter. He hopes neither notice his uneasiness.

Neither do, because they're staring only at each other.

“Rison. We're not killing anyone who doesn't have anything to do with this. And we can't go after the head of Scotland Yard, that's mental.”

And then Nori pauses. And then Nori pauses, and stops, and glares, and Dwalin finds himself peculiarly unable to hold his gaze. Still he clenches his jaw and calls every inch of himself to learn, in the short span he's realizing he's faltering, to hold his ground, to hold his ground against this sense of shame that never left and suddenly grew as loud as the blood in his heart. Nori bares his teeth and furrows his brow.

“Excuse me, _what_?”

“We're not retaliating against Peredhel.”

“I'm sorry, is this the same person I saw shooting one of the Eye's henchmen in the _head_? You suddenly grow a conscience, MacFundin?”

“Fuck you, Rison. All I'm saying is that I don't want to kill anyone who hasn't tried to kill us first.”

“Like who? Like the chap in the church? The diplomat? The guy in Tallinn?” Dwalin clenches his jaw but Nori doesn't relent, “ _Shall I continue_?”

“No.”

“Then allow me to correct you, MacFundin. People who haven't tried to kill us first, sure-- people you've been paid fifteen fucking grand to kill not whit-standing.”

He snorts when Dwalin lowers his eyes, “You know I'm _right_.”

“My-- _morality_ is none of your business.”

“Because _mine_ is? It's part of the job. You don't get to _pick and choose_ , MacFundin. There's a price you gotta pay when you're in the business.”

Dwalin feels the anger emerge like a beast from his chest slipping into his arms, grabbing his fingers like an old experienced lover, curling them into fists. She is soothing, all red-eyed and bloody, all burning, all churning, all darkness become incarnate ( _if I ever become my father, shoot me in the back o'the head. Right here. Right here._ ), this anger that he's known so well and for so long, this shimmering glow, this burn across his skin. Nori twitches, Nori sees, Nori smirks.

He crosses the distance between them and makes to shoulder his way past MacFundin to reach the door.

Dwalin slams a hand across Nori's chest and stops him.

There are seconds that sometimes become the extended essence of a moment of madness. There are seconds that expand across the universe, melt into the darkness around them and become something different, something new, something mad and oozing and tired. They ascend, transfigure into something more, mark a beginning or an end or both. Bofur sees the look Nori gives Dwalin and slowly drags himself to his feet. He crosses the room, avoids the two in the middle of it, and leaves, the door closed behind himself. He limps up the stairs, past the fire escape door they broke into.

At the first payphone he finds, he dials his brother's number. His brother does not pick up the phone. He walks all the way to his house.

“We're not killing anyone else, Rison. You've done enough damage as it is.”

Nori licks his lips.

“Get. Your hands. Off of me.” Nori mutters in response.

“No.”

“ _Get. Your hands. Off._ ” Nori repeats, turning his head from staring into space to staring, dead-set, straight into Dwalin's eyes. Dwalin opens his mouth to reply, and then Nori's grabbing his wrist and shoving him away from himself, and Dwalin instinctively tightens his grip, now burying his nails in Nori's arm.

“ _Enough_.”

“You don't get to pick and _choose_ , lover.” Nori whispers. Dwalin tries to grab both of his hands and immobilize him, but Nori's quicker, rocks his weight forward and Dwalin's shoulders meet the edge of the washing machine. It rattles like his bones as Nori makes sure to try and press Dwalin's face down against it.

“You don't tell me what to _fucking do_ , MacFundin!”

Dwalin pushes himself up again and grabs Nori by the waist, tries to kick him off, but Nori roars as he's moved and shifts his weight, and then they're both sprawling on the floor, the floor that tastes of dust. Nori lands a punch to Dwalin's face. Dwalin scrambles as his vision swims, as the pain radiates, as it kisses his lips with the tenderness of teeth ripping them wide open. He tastes his own blood, as red as the sunset.

They fuck because they cannot fight. They fight because all they can do is fuck. To fight is to master, to fight is to exert control, is to hunt, is to search, is to kill. There is no tenderness in this dance of monsters, there is no solace, there is no joy. There is this, only this: a man escaping the blood on his hands, a man bending the glass until it breaks, a man finding that the taste of guilt is always all too familiar and fucking it away in the perdition he found buried in strands of red hair. Nori fucks Dwalin because he knows every time the man comes with his name a breath from being crushed by his teeth, he has won. He has won an inch of his soul, an inch of his sanity, an inch of who he is.

It began small, like he's always known. It began with a rotten bullet planted in a rotten brain, a man on the streets of Estonia, it began like that, like all the simplest of tragedies. It began with revenge and a fight on the stairs that was closer to fucking than either of them knew.

Dwalin punches Nori in the stomach, Dwalin slams Nori against the concrete wall and he wails, and Rison's teeth meet the colors painted by Dwalin's knuckledusters.

The first time Dwalin had fucked him, in a shitty plastic bed in a shitty motel in Bratislava, he'd come harder than he ever had, his orgasm tinged by the intoxicating darkness of poison and hate. Never had he wanted to fuck as much as he hated. Never had he wanted to kill as much as he wanted to break into submission-- and what a delicious, broken submission this one was.

Nori buries his nails in Dwalin's cheek and Dwalin yells as Rison scratches him.

How often can one say that they controlled past the belt around their neck? That every time Dwalin called him _pet_ Nori smirked and twisted the events that much more in his favor? That he enjoyed it, bastard trickster son, to know that Dwalin thought he had him in control? That he reveled in the blood and the intimate glory of controlling another person with the simplest of things: his own body.

Dwalin lets go of Nori and falls back, leaning against the dryer to help himself stand. Nori collides with his stomach, and they're both on the floor again.

But things, as simple as they begin, never end simply. Dwalin manages to grab Nori and slam him against the wall, and it is not anger, it is not lust, it is _hate_ , hate at this twitchy righteous little man, hate at this boy with knives for teeth and poison in place of kisses, hate for the way he can walk between worlds and dance like he was born for it, born of it, born of the violence, born for the violence. Nori Rison tears his way throguh the world and when it does not bend to his will, he makes sure that it will _break_ to it, in the ease that it takes for able hands to snap a neck. There is no conscience, of this he is sure, beneath Nori's rotting ribcage-- there is only what he is, and what he is is chaos in a heart and four limbs, chaos in a throat, chaos in bloodied hands. Nori is thunder and breaking, Nori is the force that he's currently trying to keep from biting his face, one thumb pressed between Nori's teeth and the other hand tangled in Rison's hair, tugging him back. Nori's face a bloodied mask where his knuckledusters split his eyebrow, Dwalin's eyesight still clouded with his own wound and blood.

But Dwalin chose to run and tell himself, in pretty confectioned lies, that he was _above_ all that Nori has done and become because he had a _code_ , a smattering of morality (it crumbles, as easily as Nori proved to him), and now here they are, and the taste of Nori's blood is a milion times sweeter than his spit. He finally pushes Nori away.

“I hate you!”

“Why? _Why do you do this_?”

And Nori sneers and bends his head back, arms outstretched, palms wide to God who does not listen nor care, “Because I-- because I, _I_ am nothing if not the monster they told me I could only ever be!”

Here he stands, wide armed, his own blood on his face, Dwalin's on his hands, a crown of red hair that could almost be thorns, Jesus upon the cross, laughing Jesus, sullen Jesus, blasphemous in all his mirth and myrrh and sodomy, the choked strangled sound he is birthing from his mouth as he stares Dwalin in the face, fair and square, this man he took between his legs and made his in every intimate destructive way, this man who thinks they are first and foremost _any different_. If he could tear the wings of God's most beloved Seraphim and show them to Him in all their throbbing fallacious humanity he would, a hundred times over, if only it would mean breaking every one of MacFundin's bones. Here they stand, the rumble of the pipes that run along the ceiling like clockwork, like chant, like choir.

Dwalin sighs.

There is a brother, there are two brothers, there is a father he does not know, there is a father he wishes he'd never met, there is a three room apartment, there is a small kitchen smelling of the broken bottle of wine, there is the Christmas tree you scavenged and brought into your home as the vicarious vicious emblem of hope and it _was_ , for a moment it _was_ , and there is the type of undeniable, holy, beautiful glee that comes from running down the street, knowing you will be faster than the coppers. Street rats, both stained in harm and blood in their own way. Since when do blood and shame carry the same colours?

Since he decided to make them so.

Dwalin leans back, catching his breath. He sees them now, standing underneath a roof underneath a darkening sky, he sees them, now, their resting eyes below the poverty line, their mothers with their hands rubbed raw, their brothers with too much starlight in their eyes for the world to be contained too simply. He sees them both, standing at the end of the line at the end of the bridge, the holiness of an adrenaline induced hallucination, the divinity of truth and unwanted correspondence emerging like the pain one carries inside his head when they're pulling teeth, one by one, and there will never be anesthesia. Two boys and _problem child_ written like gospel on the back of their hands, such a disastrous equivalent of stigmata, the sneers of richer kids like a guillotine, the rattle of the system, of the higher ups and the bankers and the police as they sneer and chuckle and spit the much in their throats at them like they're dogs.

 _Nothing if not the monster they told me I could only ever be_.

They stand at the edge of the end, and chaos crashes like fragments of buildings burning.

“No, no. There's always a choice.”

“Choice is the illusion that they fed you when they told you that your fate wasn't written on your face the moment God decided to have your mum come from Crookston, lover.”

“Don't call me that.”

“I can call you whatever the damn well I _please_ , lover.”

“I'M NOT YOUR LOVER!”

There is the difference, the thing that makes him want to _strangle_ Dwalin MacFundin with his bare hands. Because where there was at first only petty revenge, now is bitterness, now is anger, now is rage, now is _how dare he think he is better than me_ , “At least I'm not a _fucking hypocrite_ , MacFundin.”

Dwalin throws him to the ground and the punches fall as hard as his own guilt swells madly in his eyes, between his nose and the rest of his face, in his brain cavity, between his tongue and teeth, in the empty, in the empty, in all the bad choices he's ever had to make because he was tired and broken and lonely.

Nori laughs and Dwalin lets go of him again, crawls backwards, stumbles to his feet as Nori pulls himself on all fours. Rison spits drool and blood.

“This isn't over, MacFundin,” he mumbles, as Dwalin walks backwards, eyes still fixed on Nori's face that's a bloodbath, “You walk out of this room, and one day you'll crawl right back to me.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

Nori smiles, Nori closes his eyes and sits on his haunches, head drooping slightly.

“Because you love to play with fire, and I'd love to watch you burn.”

And then Dwalin leaves the room, doesn't glance back, hears the words churn in his brain like he's feeling them scald his skin and he waits and he wavers and he stands, still, at the edge of the pool. And for a moment he's drowning. And for a moment the world comes crashing to a shimmering end.


	13. epilogue

**SIS BUILDING  
** VAUXHALL CROSS  
OCTOBER 26 th, 1999  
3:45 PM 

The headache rests, heavy enough, on the spot right beneath his left eye. He squeezes it shut and presses down there with his index finger, safe in the intimacy of being the only one in the elevator. The finger becomes his whole hand, rubbing each temple, and Elrond groans softly. He's carrying a file folder in his other hand.

The elevator opens. He steps out, nods to Haldir and then makes his way into G's office.

“Morning, G.”

“Good morning.”

 

* * *

 

She leans back, eyes closed, the sigh of her voice a hover between her lips. Beside her, The Mouth jangles the chains around his wrists, connected to the ones around his calves. The yellow and green boiler suits they're both wearing are anything but _flattering_.

The two armed guards that sit across from them in the police van smirk and Werner decidedly ignores them. Shelob opens her eyes.

“You've finally got what was coming for you, love,” one of them tells her,

She smiles, “I'm _sure_ of that.”

 

* * *

 

Elrond puts the folder down on the agent's desk. He keeps a finger pressed against his temple, absent-mindedly massaging it.

“Thought you might want to read it, given The Eye's involvement.”

G glances at it and continues typing away at his typewriter, peering at the text from over his glasses, “I thought I'd told you not to go after The Golden Trio, Peredhel.”

“Yeah, well, I disregarded that friendly advice.”

“How's your brother?”

Elrond doesn't even frown, “Still dying.”

 

* * *

 

She stretches by bunching up her shoulders and yawning.

“Tough night?” the guard on the right asks her, “You lie awake thinking about all the people you've killed?”

Her smile's back, unwavering, “Not really, no.”

“Jesus, you really are a bi--”

The explosive charge tears through his side of the prison van, and it comes to a burning, screeching halt. Werner breaks one of his thumbs and slips out of the handcuffs and grabs the gun placed for him by an undercover member underneath the van bench they're sitting on, the other guard stands up, “Don't--”

He shoots him before he can finish.

 

* * *

 

“They found the body of one of my men.” Elrond mutters. He's leaning back in the chair, nursing a glass of water courtesy of Haldir. He's too tired even to feel sad. He's in too much pain to feel anything at all, really.

“I'm very sorry. Who?”

“Jeff Chambers. Slightly older than Greenleaf. It's got Rison's... signature all over it.”

“Work of the Trio?”

“No, I think it's just him. Probably wanted to send me a message.”

“I reckon you tried to arrest him.” G says, the sound of the typewriter keys the mechanical heartbeat of every sentence he's been saying. The sound pierces through Elrond's eardrum and settles at the bottom of his jaw, sending slow sluggish pulses of pain up its edge, across his cheekbone, back into the bottom of his left eye.

“Chambers was a good man.” he says past the pain that makes his tongue sluggish.

“I can imagine. I am very sorry it happened.”

G stops typing and crosses his hands in his lap, leaning back. He looks at Elrond, and Elrond accepts the apology in the small curt nod he gives. He opens the file Elrond gave him, and skims through it.

 

* * *

 

Werner grabs the handcuff he broke free of and brandishes it. The back doors of the transportation van are thrown open by the driver, and The Mouth pounces. The driver falls to the ground on the side of the road, the blood from the cut on his forehead he got when he slammed on the breaks (and his face hit the steering wheel) mixing with the one spurting from his neck when Dunkelstimme buries the pointed end of the cuff in his carotid. The agent screams. Shelob, still sitting, watches, quiet.

 

* * *

 

“I am glad you caught Dunkelstimme and Örümcek. You've dealt The Eye a heavy blow, and found two of the people who will be able to tell us much more than we already know.”

“I know. Believe me, Mithrandir, I am more than relieved.”

Haldir slams the door open, pale as a sheet. G furrows his brow and Elrond turns to look at him. Haldir clears his throat.

“Sir, we've got a problem.”

 

* * *

 

Werner stands, the handcuff keys in hand, as the police sirens become louder and louder.

“Peredhel's gotten fast.”

“No matter. You should go.”

He turns to face her, baffled. She's staring at him, as stoic as ever, not moving an inch.

“Spider--”

“If we both run, they'll never stop looking. If one of us stays, if _I_ stay, they'll think they will be able to break me and learn all our secrets, and this will give you all time to regroup and reorganize.”

“She'll kill me if she knows they have you.”

“Then you will die a glorious death, knowing you have served your Mistress well.”

The first car peeks over the horizon. She sees it.

“ _Go_ ,” she barks. The Mouth glances behind his shoulder, “Jesus. All right.” and then disappears in the bushes, and runs like mad. Shelob nods to herself, closes her eyes, and waits.

 

* * *

 

“Jesus Christ.”

Elrond buries his face in his hands, “Jesus, fucking, Christ.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, gives himself time to regain his composure, and then opens them. G is staring at him, nervously tapping against the surface of his desk, he's stood up. He paces up to Haldir, “Tell The Lady. Let her know.”

“Already done, sir.”

Elrond closes his eyes again. It appears to be the best technique, for now, to try and ignore the way the world's just started breaking again. The phone rings and G picks up. He listens, agrees a few times, and then thanks whoever he's spoken to.

“Agents are on the scene--”

“I should go.”

“You can wait here, for once. It's not always up to you--”

“But it was _my mistake_.”

G sighs and then continues, “Dunkelstimme is gone, but Shelob is still there.”

Elrond's shoulders fall. He lowers his hands.

“Still there? Oh. Good. _Good_. Jesus, what a fucking _shit day_. Fuck.”

“Let it out, Peredhel.”

Elrond takes a deep breath. One, then a second, then a third. He sits back into his chair.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait.”

“We wait? For what?”

“For whatever's to come.”

“It could take years. Shelob not escaping it's... it's fishy as Hell, G.”

“I know. But she is also _in our hands_. Which means _not_ with The Eye.” G pauses, for a moment unsure of his own words, “That's bound to count for something.”

 

* * *

 

**AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION  
** OCTOBER 27 th, 1999  
2:13 AM 

Fear is an emotion Werner Dunkelstimme is hardly ever used to. It pays off, to work for The Eye, the type of organization that allows a man to have the world at his feet with a snap of his fingers-- after all, you don't bring the Crown of England to its knees without causing all-encompassing, horrifying terror.

He's wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. His thumb's been splinted, and he's been given a dose of painkillers.

All of that, however, doesn't help the fact that he feels he's staring death in the face, and she has come to break him. It is strange, when the one who is usually the spokesperson has to face a spokesperson-- she will never show her face. In all the years he's worked for her, he's seen it only once.

The Witch King sighs, “I hope you recognize the damage that you've done, Werner. Your little stint with Rison cost us dearly.”

Werner grins in response, his smile the noose around his neck, “What can I say? I enjoy tinkering with the common folk. Got a little out of hand.”

“We do not _tinker_ with dogs. We put them down.”

Werner's smile falls. He swallows.

“You got the Spider captured. Our best agent is in the hands of the enemy, solely because you didn't know when to stop.”

“To be fair, Rison was with Broadbeam. We were hoping to bring the latter in.”

The Witch King opens both hands, wrists resting on the surface of the metal table, palms turned upwards. He frowns mockingly, and shrugs.

“Do you see Broadbeam anywhere? Do you see his briefcase? His codes? His horrendous, obnoxious handlebar mustache?”

Werner snorts and the Witch King's gaze kills the snort before it can ever become a laugh.

“You don't, do you? Because he's not _here_.”

Werner lowers his head, “No sir.”

“No sir _indeed_. She doesn't want to kill you, much to my confusion and disappointment, so consider this a _warning_. One next mistake,” and he smiles, leans forward, lowers his voice, “and I'll have the pleasure of putting your head on a _pike_.”

Dunkelstimme swallows and shifts in his seat. The Witch King smiles.

The clouds outside burst, and the storm begins.

 

**the end**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to everyone who hung out and followed me the last few weeks in this crazy little ride, thank you so much! and a massive thank you also to bracari-iris for the incredible art they've drawn, links to which are at the beginning of the fic. this has been incredibly fun, and it's all thanks to you guys.


End file.
